
Class TSsJlbl. 



GoiPglitN". 



COPVRIGHT DEPOSIT 



The lake and all its hills were old 
When youthful Adam first loved Eve. 



BOOK OF THE GREEN LAKE MANSE 

A Sequel to the Rhymed Story 
of Wisconsin 

BY J. N. DAVIDSON. A. M. 



The Lord hath given the father honor over 
the children, and hath confirmed the authority 
of the mother over the sons. 

— Ecclesiasticus III, 2. 



MADISON. WISCONSIN 

TRACY a KILGORE 

PRINTERS 

1913 



p\i" y - 



Copyrighted, 1913 
By John Nelson Davidson 



FEB 26 1914 



©aA369146 



CONTENTS 



PAGE. 

To Mr. George Huntington Webster 7 

On Seeing at Forest Lodge a Portfolio of Etchings 7 

Still Sings Thy Heart 8 

Of the Wonderful Effects of Divine Love 8 

The Present Lord. 11 

Immanuel 12 

We Have Loved a Little Child 12 

Edward Huntington Merrill 13 

Mrs. Catherine Demorest Eaton 13 

Edmund Booth 14 

Bertha May Booth 14 

Mrs. Grace Hamilton Sweeney 16 

Dedication Hymn, Grace Church, Two Rivers 17 

To the Growing Grass at Hill Crest 18 

William E. Cramer 18 

Mrs. Jeanette Laurie Palmer 19 

On Reading one of the ''Sonnets from the Portu- 
guese" 20 

A Christmas Sonnet 21 

Dies Irae 22 

Day of Wrath 23 

A Nation-Builder 27 

In Memory of a Friend 27 

In Memory of John Nagle 28 

In Memory of Frances Schroeder 29 

At the Grave of William Taylor 30 

At St. John's Cathedral 30 

John Calvin on Government 31 

Versification of Micah VI. 6-8 32 

The Kingdom of God 32 

Our Twenty-seven Presidents 34 

The Governors of Wisconsin 37 

Wisconsin Song 38 



Green Lake School Song- 3& 

Song of the Class of 1909, Green Lake High School 41 
Hymn for the Wisconsin Congregational Conven- 
tion 42; 

Dedication Hymn for Church at Anamosa, Iowa. . . 42 

Endeavor Consecration Hymn 43 

The Pledge in Song 44 

A Lakeside Walk in Winter Wind 45 

Wisconsin Spring 47 

The Wind of Yesterday 48 

The Joke of the Season 49- 

With Apologies to the Sawdust City 49 

Have You a Rhyme for Peshtigo ? 50 

My Neighbor's Chickens 50 

To Mr. Carnegie's Spelling Reform Association.. 62 
A Suggested Ending for One of James Whit- 
comb Riley 's Poems 53 

Carpet Beating 54 

The Steam Thresher 55 

On a Bill for " The Doane Owl " 56 

On Reading of a $200,000 Crown Given by a Brewer 

to his Wife 57 

For the Young Folks at Hill Crest 58 

Visions Given by a Voice 58 

The Song of the Needle 59 

The Academy's Soldier 60 

A Scene on the Shield of Achilles 61 

A Parable of Hope 62 

Believe 62 

To My Neighbors at Hill Crest 63 

To Mr. H. B. Lowe 64 

A Plea for " Pleaded " 65 

In Memory of Professor Joseph Emerson 66 

Christmas Spirit 67 

Our Summer School of Only Three 68 

Mary Leavitt 69 

Rose of Enzie 86 

Mrs. Mary Sanderson 87 

Our Wee Pet 92 



Preface and Dedication 

The Green Lake Manse is in a place of 
beauty. It stands beside an oak that carries 
its leaves nearer to the sky than any other 
tree in Green Lake; an oak that was old 
when the pioneers made close to it a road the 
depression of which is still visible. On the 
right of this old road, as you go eastward, 
men built the church; on the left of it, the 
school. To each there has been a well worn 
path from the Manse; a path that has been 
prolonged until it has reached Ripon Col- 
lege, and thence a scientific institution in the 
Nation's Capital. 

Between the oak and the Manse is a vista 
through which one may see, even in summer, 
the deepest of Wisconsin's lakes; the one 
destined to remain when the others of our two 
thousand shall have turned to marshes and 
meadows. 

Beside this lake is a home whence came 
the children who made "our summer school 
oi only three," without the interest of whose 
parents this book might not have been pub- 
lished. Not far from this lakeside Vatican, 
as in harmless and obvious jest I sometimes 
call it, is Forest Lodge, whose kindly owner 
found that kindred of his were old-time 
friends of my father and my mother. He 
himself is one of the many who added to the 
5 



happiness of my mother's later days. May 
God reward them all! 

I am sure others will not think it invidious 
if I make special mention of what Mr. and 
Mrs. Lawson, of Lone Tree Point, did for the 
building of the Manse, and for the joy of the 
heart of her who was the first mistress of it. 
Mrs. Lawson's father, the late William 
Henry Bradley, was a citizen of Galena when 
my mother dwelt there; and my aunt was his 
pupil in Bible class. He was a citizen who, 
wherever he lived, left the impress of a 
character that was like a newly stamped coin 
of gold. 

As I write these words Vergil's "rainy 
Hyades" are lighting the clear Eastern sky. 
In Hill Crest home, next on the west, the 
children of a gracious mother sleep; children 
of a bereaved father. I am alone, for they, 
sister and cousin, who now share the Manse 
with me are guests in the home on Lone Tree 
Point. Dawn and Night are contending. It 
is the morning of the day that precedes the 
eighty- fifth anniversary of my mother's birth. 
To her memory, and to the friends who love 
her, I dedicate this book. May she, in Para- 
dise, be glad that it has been written. 

J. N. D. 

Green Lake, 

Nineteen Thirteen, 

August First. 



To Mr. George Huntington Webster 

On the Seventy- second Anniversary of his Birth 

Acquaintance thine am I of summer days, 
And these but few. Is it my privilege 
At this glad time to bring thee word of praise 
Like some wild flower that grew on rocky ledge? 
Perhaps not even this is mine to give, 
But only humble leaf that on some oak 
Makes murmur while the August hours still live. 
But one who at God's moving taught and spoke, 
Compared the righteous man to stately tree 
That by the waters bears abundant fruit. 
Thou hast deserved that we apply to thee 
His gracious words. So let our own be mute. 



On Seeing at Forest Lodge a Portfolio of Etchings 

What marvel this? A city old and quaint. 
Transported hither by the etcher's art. 
Reveals its past, inscribed on living heart, 
We see the shrine, built by forgotten saint. 
And seem to hear his vespers, far and faint. 
The artist leads us to the busy mart 
Where pavements show the wear of hoof and cart. 
Rebuilds he walls that heard the beggar's plaint 

When France first heard of world beyond the sea; 

When kings rolled by who share the centuries* fame. 
There ruined chateau dominates the lea; 

Here arch spans flood 'neath sunset skies aflame : — 
An offering all, of filial piety, 
"To father" given. Then follows Webster's name. 

Nineteen Thirteen, September 13. 



Still Sings Thy Heart 

Still sings thy heart, for thou hast measured years 
With sunshine, not with storm, with joy, not tears, 
And therefore youth abideth with thine age, 
Blest is thy record writ on life's fair page. 
The story of unselfish love is there; 
A love that quickens now our heart-felt prayer 
For thee and thine; that all that thou hast done 
Of faithful service wrought from sun to sun 
May, as attendant angel, walk with thee 
Along the shore of life's majestic sea. 



On the Wonderful Effects of Divine Love 

BY THOMAS A'KEMPIS 

Lov^e is altogether good; 
By itself it maketh light 
Everything that seemeth heavy, 
Maketh burdens seem no burden; 
All that's bitter maketh sweet. 
By the noble love of Jesus 
Man to do great things is driven, 
And it stirreth in him longing 
For what is more nearly perfect. 

Love willeth that it be on high; 
Love willeth not to be kept back 
By any thing that's low and mean, 
Love willeth that itself be free: 
By worldly good be not entangled 
Or by adversity subdued. 



Nothing is sweeter than Love, 
Nothing- is stronger than Love, 
Nothing is higher, nothing is wider. 
Nothing more pleasant than Love. 
Nothing is fuller or better than Love 
In earth or in heaven; 
For Love's born of God 
And findeth no rest but in Him. 

A lover rejoiceth, is free; 

He flieth, he runneth, 

And no man can hold him. 

He hath all in all 

And all for all giveth 

Because in the Highest he resteth; 

He resteth in Him above all 

From whom all that is good 

Proceedeth and floweth. 

He respecteth not gifts 

But turneth himself to the Giver. 

Love knoweth no measure ofttimes. 

And fervent is Love above measure, 

Attempteth above its own strength. 

And for itself lawful 

And for itself possible 

Love thinketh all things; 

And therefore for all things is strong. 

And much it completeth 

And bringeth to pass 

Where one not a lover 

Doth faint and lie down. 

Watchful is Love 

And even when sleeping 

It slumbereth not. 

Though it endure to be weary 

It is not lightly tired. 

Love, tho' pressed, is not straitened; 

Or alarmed, is not put to confusion. 



As a flame or a torch in its burning 

It forceth its way ever upward. 

If any man love 

He knoweth the cry of this voice, — 

Loud cry in God's ears, 

The ardent affection that saith: 

"My God, my Love. 

Thou art all mine, 

And all I am is Thine." 

Enlarge Thou me in Love 
That with the palate of my heart 
I may taste and I may learn 
How sweet a food it is to love. 
Let me be holden by Love, 
Above myself mounting 
Through fervor and wonder. 

Let me sing the song of Love: 

Beloved, let me follow Thee; 

Spend thyself, my soul, in praise 

In thy joy through Love. 

Let me love Thee, love Thee, more 

Than I love myself. 

Nor love myself except in Thee; 

And love in Thee 

All that love Thee, love Thee, truly. 

As the law of Love commandeth, 

Law that shineth from Thyself. 

Love is swift and is sincere. 
Love is pleasant and delightsome. 
Brave and patient, faithful, prudent. 
Manly, never seeking self. 
Where a person seeketh self 
There from Love he falleth, falleth. 

Love is circumspect and humble, 
Upright, yielding not to softness, 
Nor to vanity attending. 

10 



Love is sober, chaste and firm, 
Quiet, guarded and obedient; 
Unto God, devout and thankful; 
Trusting, hoping in Him always. 
Who is not prepared to suffer 
For the will of his Beloved 
Is not worthy name of lover; 
Nor for things that fall against him 
Should the lover turn from God,— 
From his well beloved God. 

Versified by J. N. Davidson. 



The Present Lord 

Forgive me, Jesus, if I think of Thee 

Not seated by the Father's throne in light 

But guiding in some sad soul's wandering 

night, 

Or Captain of those men whom sinners flee, 

Or easing disappointment when the plea 

The wronged have made for justice and 

the right 
Seems all unheard and all in vain the fight. 
Unconquered still Thy hosts; Thou giv'st to 
see 
The triumph though delayed; with these 

Thou art. 
Or this I think: He is with all that keep 
Integrity in field, or shop, or mart; 
With those who watch while homes and 
children sleep; 
With those who feel the rending of the heart 
When silent steps of death near loved ones 

creep. 
''The Advance,'' February 16, 1305. 



Immanuel 

O living tree of fruit and flower, 
O word of everlasting power, 
O creed of blessed truth and trust, 
O faith that lifts us from the dust: 
God with us, blest Immanuel. 

The blood in hearts thou hast renewed 
Beats high to call of brotherhood, 
Makes strong for deeds of love the hands 
When men hear gladly thy commands, 
Thou Brother God, Immanuel. 



We Have Loved a Little Child 

WRITTEN FOR A FRIEND 

He who loves a little child 
Doeth what our God hath done. 
Think ye. In His own loved Son, — 
Crowned with manhood undefiled, 
Lord in storm and conflict wild,— 
God hath blessed each little child. 

We have loved a little child. 
Read ye. Jesus, Lord of life, 
Taketh from earth's hurt and strife.— 
Like Himself all undefiled, 
Never by the wrong beguiled, — 
And He keepeth safe our child. 



Edward Huntington Merrell 

Thy life-work is not done, for thou didst build 

For age of ages, not for years alone; 

Like those who formed the miracles in stone, — 
Men chief among the captains of their guild, 
Who shrine and temple and cathedral filled 

With questioning "Who can for sin atone?" 

And God gave longed-for answer: things unknown, 
He brought to light as He Himself hath willed. 
Thou'st formed of many a heart a temple fair; 

Hast towers of thought built upward toward the skyj 
Hast wrought in state and college with the care 

Wise master-builders showed in times gone by. 
Thou, bending at thy task with zeal and prayer, 

Had'st vision and didst teach of God Most High. 

In Memory of Mrs. Catharine Demarest 
Eaton 

As one who passing by some hallowed shrine 
Hears voice of song and utterance of prayer. 
And knows some soul hath felt its weight 
of care. 
Or burden of its sin, by touch divine 
Removed; so have I known that life of thine; 
Thy home a temple, thou a priestess there. 
Thy voice that made melodious the air 
In blessing hearts hath oft, far heard, blest 

mine. 
Brave hearted singer in heroic days. 
Thy life was purpose set to melody! 
Wife, mother, friend, thy character displays 

The impress that on Mary's soul we see; 
Thou wilt not blush now at our words of 
praise. 
Our tribute hath its truth, its worth from 

thee! 
"Advance," April 7, 1904. 

13 



Ninety Years of Silence 

Written in Memory of Edmund Booth, 
His mother's songs he heard; then silence fell, 

To him all noiseless was his schoolmates' play, 

And birds with songs unheard filled all the day. 
"Sad, sad," men sighed "that he apart must dwell 
As in a voiceless world.'' But let his life's work tell 

How strong the resolute soul; how mighty they 

Who beat beneath their feet the fears that sway 
The timid and the weak. A proud farewell 
We speak, for thou hast stood life's testing pain; 

Thou wast the conqueror of thine adverse fate; 
Sight of the soul far-reaching, thou didst gain; 

Cry of the wronged made thee articulate; 
Rights of the dumb thou didst with might maintain; 

Deeds like thy Lord's; these we commemorate. 

Bertha May Booth 

A Teacher of the Dumb 

The theme of the first of these sonnets was suggested by French's wonder- 
ful tribute to his friend. Milmore; the work entitled, "Death and the Sculp- 
tor," 

A young man toiling at the wondrous art 
That gives to marble human form and grace 
Perceived a touch and, turning, saw the face 
Not of a threat'ning Horror armed with dart 
But of a matron with a loving heart 

Who bore this kindly message: "In some place 
Thy Master hath a need that thou should'st trace 
Fair lines of beauty; that thou life impart 

To what were else imperfect, shapeless, dead '' 

Thine, daughter, sister, was a nobler art 
Than sculptor's craft or painter's; thou hast led 

The moving of the mind in those apart 
In everlasting silence and the dread 

Of hopeless years. Thou'st taken Christ's own part 
In pitying woe and inarticulate need 
And hast these helpless from their bondage freed. 

14 



"Good night" thou say'st? Why, it is not mid-day! 
Thy sun hath not to noon's high altitude 
Arisen yet. Like discord harsh and rude, 
In music's charm seems parting now; we say: 
There can be none who need thee more than they 
To whom thou gav'st the rare, rich plenitude 
Of thy great heart and of thy mind imbued 
With love of duty; who made toil seem play. 

With love of beauty; who spake word divine. 

"Be opened'' to dumb lips; whose words in song, 
"I trust Thee with my life," seem like design 

Of Him to whom the ways of life belong. 
That we may comfort find as we resign. 
Thee to the Father who can do no wrong. 

Who would have thought that this memorial strain 
My pen should write? For I have seen thee play 
In happy sisterhood the summer day. 
Of years long past: have heard thy laugh; refrain 
Of thy abounding ioyfulness. No pain 
Nor asking "Why?" of God can take away 
The memory whereby I hear thee say: 
"Tell us a story, please." O why complain 
When still I hear the music of thy tongue. 
Still see the beauty that can never fade; 
For thou shalt be forever fair and young; 

Approaching life unknown, yet not afraid. 
Thy noblest song, I know, is yet unsung; 
Thy life's full offering hath not yet been made! 



15 



In Memory of Mrs. Grace Hamilton Sweeney 

Keep thy dear place: 
Beside us still, we can not let thee go. 
Our lives shalt still thy constant presence know. 
More thou wilt be than form or face portrayed. 
In that fair dwelling that our love hath made 
Abide as one who lives; keep thine own place. 

Keep thy dear place: 
Continue thou with us, increase our joy. 
Here, here are those who love thee, here thy boy. 
Here father, mother, husband are; most dear; 
And all who shared thy deeper life; be near; 
Still live with us; keep always thine old place. 

Keep thy dear place: 
We who have shared the home's sweet sacrament 
Have right to thee, for thou wast given, not lent. 
Share, as God wills, some larger life, but know. 
He knoweth well, for He hath made us so, — 
That we shall keep thee in thine own dear place. 

Keep thy deas place: 
When summer silence on the outspread stream 
Gives back to heaven its stars; when all things seem 
So like a gift of God's eternal peace; 
When clouds have passed, when sound and tumult cease, 
Thou, though unseen, wilt be in thine old place.- 

Keep thy dear place: 
When by the Father's bounties we are fed, 
Together at our table breaking bread. 
Seem not as one that's absent; all the day 
Make duty blessed, share thy child's fond play, 
Make glad our hearts; keep always thy dear place. 

Keep thy dear place: 
We bid thee no farewell; we still shall see 
The light of thy loved face, and none can be 
Nearer than thou. Share thou the home above, — 
Thou'lt be no stranger in a world of love, — 
But still abide with us; keep thine own place. 

16 



Dedication Hymn 

In large part the beautiful new Grace Congregational 
church of Two Rivers, Wisconsin, stands as a memorial 
of parental love. The following hymn, by Pastor J. 
N. Davidson of Green Lake, was sung at the dedica- 
tion of Grace Church, 1909, March 7: 

Blest, Thou hast caused this house to be 
For all assembled think of love, — 

Love, deeper than the deepest sea; 
Love binding earth to heaven above. 

These walls are love's transfigured form; 

A shade in passion's burning heat; 
A shelter in grief's wintry storm; 

A place where man our God may meet. 

By all the gifts that built this shrine 

Help us in others' lives to see 
Some hope in God, some wish divine, 

Some far extending charity. 

Our giving is Thine own returned; 

Our love Thy teaching, feebly learned; 
To Thee all good, all truth belong; 

Here speak them, Lord, in word and song 

So shall this temple lesson be 
That God is dwelling yet with men 

In hope and blessed memory; 
In deed that brings Christ near again. 



To the Growing Grass at Hill Crest 

O fairj soft turf, pressed ofc by gracious feet, 

Where children play in innocence and glee; 

Where tired toilers come a while to free 
Their minds and hearts from struggle and deceit 
Of courts' sharp wrangles and, in love, complete 

The summer home's rare happiness; and see 

The tricky squirrel dart from hickory tree 
With winter store to some secure retreat. 
Bless, yielding turf, with coolness active feet 

Of those who strength and sunshine seek in play; 
To whom seems near one who made home complete; 

Who loved these scenes, and watched from day to day 
The bending sky and lake each other greet; — 

She bids you with your joy her love repay. 



William E. Cramer 

In the high peerage of the press and pen. 

That unassembled parliament of state. 

His was a place among the nobly great. 
Right eminent was he among the men 
Who sought Wisconsin when the wild beast's den 

Still held its tenants. In that d»y of fate 

When men on fundamentals held debate 
His was the counsel of a citizen 

Who loved the forming commonwealth, who saw,- 
Broader than vision on our inland sea, — 

The future of a state on righteous law 
Builded to stand forever. Hail to thee, 

Thou first 'mid equals. We in rev'rence draw 
Strength from thy life and its integrity. 

Published 1905, May 28th. 

18 



In Memory of Mrs. Jeannette 
Laurie Palmer 

If all were like her happy all would be, 
How kindly was her laugh, how inno- 
cent her glee! 
Two things she joined that many keep 

apart : 
Wise trust in God; a joyous, merry heart. 
So was she like the morning's blessed light 
That upward-guides the eye, that makes 
all bright 
In sky and earth. "Because to God she 
lives 
Her loving service to us all she gives." 
So said they all who knew her daily life, 
O friend! O mother! O thou faithful 
wife! 
So didst thou meet each day's recurrent 
need; 
So didst thou join in one thy creed and 
deed. 



On Reading One of the "Sonnets 
from the Portuguese" 

The music of a woman's love-made rhyme 
Fell sweet and sad, at eve, upon my ear; 
At evening- in the dying of the year. 
I knew that she, pure Sappho of her time, 
Gave love for love; and, in the happy clime 
Of Tuscan Florence, sang without a peer. 
Housed patriots' hope and tyrants' hate 
and fear, — 
Without a peer she sang 'mid band sub 
lime 
Who mothers are at once of sons and 
songs! 
I knew her life had been both love 
and light; 
That she had aided triumph over wrongs; 
Had wrought with those who burned 
the Bourbon blight 
From Vergil's home and Dante's: and, 
with thongs, 
Had scourged the tyrants into outer 
night! 
The love that blessed her husband, child 

and home. 
Was potent to free Italy and Rome. 
U Deceynher, 1906. 



20 



A Christmas Sonnet 

My heart cries "Give!" and will not rest content 
Unless some token tell my love to thee. 
What can I give? Thou needest not from me 
Thy table's wealth increased; nor ornament, 
Fair in design, of art and nature blent, 

Thou art not one that boasteth, saying, "See 
How many they who make their annual plea 
"Forget me not." Nay, thou most reverent 
Before the love that, like the ocean tide. 

Sweeps round the earth with heaven-born uplift high, 
Wilt value most the gift that not in pride 

Of pleased exchange doth come, but was a sigh 
That's now a laugh; the joy of need supplied 
By lowly toil that some one, — why not I?— 
In quietness must give. Share love that's glad 
To bless alike the joyous and the sad; 
To sj,y, if thou dost mourn some heart that's still. 
Thy fondest hope is less than God's good will. 



Dies Irae 

Dies irae dies ilia, dies tribulationis et angus 
tiae, dies calamitatis et miseriae, dies tene- 
brarum et caliginis, dies nebulae et turbinis. 

Dies tubae et clangoris super civitates mu- 
nitas, et super angulos excelsos. — Sophonia 
1:15, 16. 

Dies Irae 

BY THOMAS OF CELANO. 

Dies irae! Dies ilia! 
Solvet saeclum in favilla, 
Teste David cum Sibylla. 

Quantus tremor est futurus, 
Quando Judex est venturus, 
Cuncta stricta discussurus! 

Tuba mirum spargens sonura 
Per sepulchra regionum, 
Coget omnes ante thronum. 

Mors stupebit, et Natura, 
Quumresurget creatura 
Judicanti responsura. 

Liber scriptus proferelur, 
In quo totum contineiur, 
Unde mundusljudicetur. 

Judex ergo quum sedebit, 
Quidquid latet apparebit, 
Nil inultum remanebit. 

Quid sum miser tunc dicturus? 
Quern patronum rogaturus, 
Quum vixJjusLus sit securus? 

Rex tremendae majestatis, 
Qui salvandos salvas gratis, 
Salva me, Fons pietatis. 

22 



Day of Wrath 

That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and 
distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day 
of darkness and gloominess, a day of thick clonds 
and thick darkness. 

A day of the trumpet and alarm against fenced 
cities, and against the high towers. — Zephaniah, 
1 : 15 16. 

Day of Wrath 

Day of wrath! That day portended 
David's word with Sibyl's blended; 
Earth in flame and ashes ended. 

Great the fear: that dread time neareth 
When the awful Judge appeareth 
Who all causes strictly heareth. 

Hark! The trumpet, uttering thunder 
Through the tombs now rent asunder. 
Drives all to The Throne in wonder. 

Death and Nature now are shaking: 
Lo, creation riseth quaking, 
To the judgment call awaking. 

Forth is brought the Book revealing 
All the record; deed, thought, feeUng 
Earth is judged; there's no concealing 

When the Judge His session holdeth 
Who each secret thing unfoldeth 
Nor unpunished sin beholdeth. 

Wretched, what shall I be pleading. 
Whom entreat for help or heeding 
When the just are mercy needing? 

King whose majesty hath spoken, 
To Thy chosen, Avord unbroken 
Save me: be Thy Cross the token. 



Recordare, Jesu pie, 
Quod sum causa tuae viae: 
Ne me perdas ilia die. 

Quaerens me sedisti lassus; 
Redemisti crucem passus; 
Tantus labor non sit cassus. 

Juste Judex ultionis, 
Donum fac remissionis 
Ante diem rationis. 

Ingemisco tanquam reus; 
Culpa rubet vultus meus; 
Supplicanti parce, Deus. 

Qui Mariam absolvisti, 
Et latronem exaudisti,! 
Mihi quoque spem dedisti. 

Preces meae non sunt dignae, 
Sed tu bonus fac benigne, 
Ne perenni cremer igne. 

Inter oves locum praesta, 
Et ab haedis me sequestra, 
Statuens in parte dextra. 

Confutatis maledictis, 
Flammis acribus addictis, 
Voca me cum benedictis. 

Oro supplex et acclinis, 
Cor contritum quasi cinis, 
Gere curam mei finis. 

Lacrymosa dies ilia, 
Qua resurgot ex favilla 
Judicandus homo reus; 
Huic ergo parce, Deus! 



Jesus, in Thy memory hold me; 
Though I caused Thy woe, enfold me. 
Lose me not That Day foretold me. 

Seeking me Thou, worn and falling. 
Didst redeem by Cross appalling; 
Be not vain Thy toil and calling. 

Just in law's strict execution 
Give me, Judge, Thine absolution 
Ere That Day of retribution. 

Now accused of crime, I'm groaning, 
Red my face with blush, guilt owning. 
Spare me, God, my sin bemoaning. 

Thou who pardon'st Mary pleading. 
Heard'st the Robber with Thee bleeding, 
Gav'st me also hope and heeding. 

Nothing worth my prayers and yearning: 
Yet let me, Thy goodness learning. 
Perish not in endless burning. 

With Thy sheep, as hath been told me. 
On Thy right in safety fold me; 
From th' accursed goats withhold mr. 

When the wicked, from Thee riven. 
Justice own, though flameward driven, 
Call me with Thy saints forgiven. 

I in suppliance now am bending; 
Heart like ashes! Prayer ascending! 
Give me care when time is ending. 

Day of tears and dread assembling ! 
Guilty man ariseth trembling. 
God of world aflame, O hide him ! 
Let not mercy be denied him I 



The solemn word that holy Thomas spakn 

Is surely warning for the present time. 

This is the day of judg'ment; mornings break 

That bring revealings of some hidden ci ime. 

O heart of minel unclean unless God dwell 

Welcomed within thee, know thy judgment's 

near. 
Yea, even at the doors; His thunders tell 
All secret things. Is this a cause for fear. 
That heaven and earth set truth against the lie; 
Duty against thy love of idle ease; 
Eternal life against the things that die? 
Be thou unhappy then, for God's decrees 
Are registered against thee. But, if pure 
Thine inward purpose, and if right thy choice, 
Thou wilt be glad that judgment standeth sure. 
"Jehovah reigneth; let the earth rejoice !" 



A Nation-Builder 

"Send, send us men, good men, and send them now," 
A nation builder called, for well he knew 
That even as the summer breezes blew 
Ten thousand farms, new made with busy plow, 
Had registered in maize their potent vow 

That homes should be where once wild grasses grew. 
"A state is making." Swift his wing'd words flew; 
"With manhood's wealth do ye this realm endow: 
Count time by hours, not by month or year." 
Then he, companion for apostle meet, 
Led where he bade to follow. Life was dear. 

But not his own. His offering was complete. 
His name stands first where honored names appear 
On prophets' school and college: Stephen Peet. 
And on our state, amid her greatest, best, 
We read it as on lasting palimpsest. 



In Memory of a Friend 

Olean-lipped, fine-featured, with the onward look 

Of one who, leaving boyhood, stands alert 

To see what course before thy manhood lay; 

Such wast thou, friend. I know thy honest hand, 

Thy voice sincere, striking the deeper note 

That means the entrance on the larger life 

That lies before each boy of noble aim. 

Of purpose high and spirit resolute. 

O these things make man's lifel and these were thine. 

Are thine, and by them thou will serve so long 

As this great universe hath need of good, 

Of man's integrity and highest worth. 



27 



In Memory of John Nagle 

He serves God well who serves his fellow-man; 
He faithful is who doubts not that the search 
For truth will have deserved, divine reward; 
He leader is who hews himself a road 
And shows what man can do; and patriot he 
Who puts above the clamor of the day his sense 
Of duty and of rig-ht: these things thou didst, 
Clear mind, strong soul and teacher thou of 

men. 
True hero, for thou didst not fear the strife, 
And striving thou hast won a victor's crown 
For thou hast striven well ! 

I did not personally know Mr. Nagle, However I honor 
him for the good work he did as superintendent of the 
Manitowoc county schools. Even more do I honor him for 
the stand he took against the hypocrisy and beer-addled 
bigotry that brought about the repeal of the so called Ben 
nett law; a repeal that was a legislative misdeed, and was 
followed by an increase of illiteracy in our disgraced state 



In Memory of Frances Schroeder 

Who perished when the steamer "Columbia" we 
down near San Francisco. 

Not where the sound of bells 
Falls from some hallowed shrine; 

Not where the marble tells 
Hope of a faith divine; — 

Not where the grasses creep 
Soft when the June stars shine: 

Not where thy kindred sleep 
Lies that fair form of thine. 

Then is the place unblest 

We may not know or see 
Where thou didst find the rest 

Whose morn is eternity? 

Nay, for the word of God's psalm 
Proclaimeth that His is the sea; 

He made it; — its storm and its calm; 
He will speak, and it no more shall be! 

Tke Manse, Green Lake, 

10 August, 1908. 



29 



At the Grave of William Taylor 

I came a stranger and a friend 1 found 

In him whose form is hid by this low mound. 

How did he seek his daily task to do? 

As one who faithful was, and just and true. 

How did he write the story of his life? 

In love of children, home, and God, and wife. 

What was his hope for better life above? 
The word divine that saith, "Our God is love. 



At St. John's Cathedral 

Shall I who can not speak the shibboleth 
Of creed polemic enter here and pray? 

No voice is heard, no tone or organ breath. 
A soothing silence fills the softened day. 

Why hesitate? This is my Father's shrine, 

Appointed as a place of holy tryst; 
The broken bread, the hallowed fruit of vine, 
Show here His dying Who is called the Christ. 

The bread shall perish and the cup shall fail, 
Yet He abideth Whom they feebly show. 

The hymn, the creed, the penitential wail 
Change word and form, but change He can 
not know. 

I meditate, seek peace Eternity 

Seems palpable and present. Bolder grown 
My soul claims place in that blest company 

Who worship the Eternal One alone. 



30 



John Calvin on Government 

From his address to Francis I. Versified by J. N. Davidson 
from Allen's translation. 

But it shall be yours, my king. 
Not to turn away your ears 
Or your thoughts from just defence 
In a cause of such importance 
As maintaining unimpaired 
God's own glory in the world 
And the honor of His truth 
And continuance uninjured 
Of the kingdom of our Christ. 
This is cause worth your attention, 
Worthy your cognizance royal, 
Worthy of your throne exalted. 
This consider, is true kingship 
That you own yourself God's servant 
In your kingdom's government. 
Where God's glory is not made 
End and purpose of all ruling 
There is but a usurpation 
Sore deceived he who expecteth 
Lasting good in any kingdom 
Not by God's own scepter governed 
And that scepter is His Scripture. 
Heavenly oracle ne'er faileth, — 
Truth of Proverb that declareth 
Where no vision is, the people 
Perish, casting off restraint. 



Versification of Micah vi. 6-8 

Wherewith shall I come before God 

And bow myself down to Jehovah? 

Will Jehovah be pleased 

With thousands of rams 

Or ten thousands of rivers of oil? 

Shall I give my first born for my sin, my 

transgression, 
The fruit of my body for sin of my soul? 

Man, He hath showed thee 

The things that are good. 

And what doth Jehovah require of thee 

But justice to do. 

And kindness to love 

And humbly to walk with thy God? 

The Kingdom of God 

Read at the semi centennial anniversary of the establishment at 
Stoughton, Wisconsin, under the pastorate of Rev. Robert Sewell, first 
minister of that place, of the Congregational church organized in the 
town of Dunkirk. 1846, February 22d, under the pastorate of Rev. Abner 
Barlow, and re-organized at Cooksville in 1851. 

Respectfully inscribed to Mr. and Mrs. J. H. Townsend, helpers in 
the work of The Kingdom. 

One thing only is great, and that is the kingdom;— 
Kingdom of God or of heaven, or the kingdom of manhood; 
Manhood completed in Godhood, both known in the Master, 
Him whom we build oq who plan for the ages; Foundation 
Deep and eternal, unfolding both life and its toilings. 
Wisdom is theirs who so build for themselves and their fellows. 
Thus they built whom we honor at this convocation. 
O could we write as they lived! Then the roar of the ocean 
Mingled with sound of long journeys would hush all our speakings. 
We should hear sobbings, and partings from homes left forever. 
We should know also the strength of their purpose who pressed on 
Far into lands wild and lonely, for such were our prairies. 
There we should know their heart anguish, and share fearful stillness 
Startling the ear when the earth is as silent as starlight. 

32 



Winter and storm they endured who came here to build homes, 
Churches and schools; an 1 the state, whose vast superstructure 
Rests on these lasting foundations. Churchmen and schoolmen, 
State-builders, home-makers these were, strong men and faithful; 
Chosen of God and selected from nations for this work; 
Called from the land that bore Cromwell and Milton and Bunyan; 
Called from the realms of the Kelt, of the Norsk and of Luther; 
Yea, from our own land, the mother of Edwards and Beecher. 
Such were our fathers and such their companions, our mothers. 
Fatherhood! Motherhood! Great in the Lord is their glory. 
These became fathers and mothers of states and of cities. 

What of that vine of their planting whose blossoms and clusters 
Here we behold all about us in fragrance and beauty? 
Wisdom is justified, surely, by what she hath brought forth. 
What is he worth who hath planted a tree or a wheatfield? 
What is he worth who hath framed by his skill great inventions? 
What is he worth who hath showed men the way of right living. 
Brought to them flame from the altar of God's inspiration? 
What shall it profit a man if the whole world he gaineth,— 
Gaineth, but loseth his own soul? Tell worth of this warning. 
Price can we set upon virtue and righteous endeavor? 
What are they worth who bring comfort and hope to the dying? 
What are they worth who cause names to be written in Life's Book? 
This they were worth who built here upon Christ the Foundation. 

Swiftly the years come and go, and new homes are established. 
Love gives itself unto love, and true marriage is hallowed. 
Blessing invoked on its child, and he learns of Our Father, 
God Who is love, and the teaching he never forgetteth. 
Wayward, perhaps, or grown old, still he knoweth the path home. 
God make us children again, with hearts broken, tender; 
Make us to know our communion with saints now in glory. 
Do they not know that their plantings have fruited in blessing? 
Those whose dear memory dwells in this loved congregation? 
Trustful that they who shall meet here in years now far future 
Justly may say that we kept well the faith of the fathers. 
We speak, as they did, iu word and in deed this confession. 
One thing only is great, and that is God's kingdom! 



Our Twenty-seven Presidents 

Hear first a name the world reveres; 
He led through years of hopes and fears: 
Our Washington of world-wide fame. 

Then Adams came of humbler name. 
He first Vice-President had been 
And 'mid war's din had helped to win 
In king's courts place for nation new. 
His heart was true when friends were few. 

Four years he steered the ship of state 

Through danger great, for France, so late • 

Our country's friend, had foe become, 

"Her war ships cornel" men said, while some 

As sentinels upon the land 

From him so grand await command, — 

From Washington the army's chief, 

Whose service brief (as seemed to grief) 

Had end amid this vexing strife; 

Had end with life, while tears of wife 

And nation followed to his rest 

The one called best. He stood life's test 

Mark this of Adams: First was he 
To dwell where we, by wise decree. 
Built new and great our capital; 
That pride of all; may it never fall 1 

Two terms, you know, had Washington 
And Adams one; his service done 
Plain Thomas Jefferson held sway. 
We this may say: He had his way, 
Enlarging by the Purchase great 
Our Union built of state on state. 
He bought (thus led our land's advance) 
What was to France realm of romance 

34 



Eig-ht years he served; and war-cloud dark 

With lightning- spark for all to mark 

Hung- thundering over all our seas. 

Our land to please, her fears to ease, 

James Madison hard duty found. 

Soon came war's sound with death and wound. 

For freedom on the seas we fought. 

By courage taught; with life, peace bought. 

Monroe next ruled; our land was blest. 
Oreat grew the West; as honored guest 
Came La Fayette the land to see 
He helped to free, — for you and me! 

The younger Adams next held sway; 
Then one grown gray in war's fierce way: 
The sturdy Jackson whose command 
Smote treason's hand in erring land. 
Van Buren next was nation's guide; 
Then one who died while yet untried 
In that great office, Harrison. 
Soon set his sun, his duty done. 

Then Tyler served; next, James K. Polk; 
When war awoke with deadly stroke. 
But welcome peace (the story's old) 
Gave land of gold,— of wealth untold. 

Next dying in his well won fame. 
Brave Taylor came, of honored name. 

Then Fillmore served; next, Franklin Pierce. 
Alas for Pierce! when strife was fierce 
He ruled; and then Buchanan came. 
Next, greatest name and purest fame 
Since Washington, our Lincoln earned. 
He right had learned and wrong he spurned. 
By fearful deed,— the nation's woe.— 
Crime laid him low. Next, Johnson know. 
Then came the unboasting soldier Grant, 
So free from cant and empty rant. 

35 



Next Hayes the exalted office filled, 
Then votes willed (who soon were thrilled 
Once more with tale of crime's wild thrust)' 
To give the trust to Garfield just. 

Then Arthur President became, 
This roll of fame next bears the name 
Of Cleveland, by sharp contest tried. 
We bade preside as nation's guide. 
Next term, the younger Harrison. 

Twice Cleveland won; his service doae 

McKinley took the helm of state 

When dark and great war's cloud and fate 

Broke peace with Spain. A tale of crime 

Now mars our rhyme. O mournful time! 

Again a President was slain. 

In shame and pain,— foul murder's stain,— 

His grave was made where once he dwelt. 

He justice dealt. Then Roosevelt 

A scholar bold in hunter's craft, 

A foe of "graft," preceded Taft. 

Then Wilson of New Jersey came, 

Of college fame and high acclaim. 



36 



Governors of Wisconsin 

Before Wisconsin was a state 

Twice Dodge the bold had governed well. 
Two others held the office great, 

To put the tale in rhyme we tell 
That Dodge came first and fourth: between 
Came Doty, second; Tallmadge, third: 
And then Wisconsin's name is seen 

In list of states. You've often heard 
That Dewey, first, the people chose, 

Then Farwell, Barstow, Bashford came. 
Next Randall's name the record shows; 

Then Harvey justly known to fame. 
Who where dark Southern river flows 

Found death — in service for the state. 
On Salomon the office fell. 

While still we mourned brave Harvey's fate. 
The name of Lewis next we tell. 

Then Fairchild thrice the people chose. 
He lost an arm in Southern fight. 

Read Washburn, Taylor, names 'mid those 
Who held the office. Then we write 

Both Ludington and Smith. Next read 
That Rusk bore rule for sevea full years. 

Then Hoard, and Peck, and Upham heed. 
Next Scofield came. La Follette hears 

The Senate's call, and so resigns 
To Davidson the honored trust. 

These names our history tells in lines 
•Of praise or blame; to all be just. 

Then came McGovern; may we tell, 
When he has done, that he did well. 



37 



Wisconsin Song 

tune: "AMERICA." 

Wisconsin, favored state, 
In Union true and great 

With East and West; 
One people, happy, free. 
With North and South are we, 
With dwellers by the sea; 

A nation blest. 
They came from far and near 
Who hold Wisconsin dear 

Nor farther roam; 
From states grown great and strong, 
From realms of fame and song. 
They came in eager thron>^ 

And here found home. 
With strength of sturdy arm 
They wrought the field and farm. 

Built town and school. 
Then heard from Southern strand, 
War's thunder shake the land 
And fought at just command 

For righteous rule. 
With cheerful heart and voice 
Their children now rejoice 

In happy song. 
We love lands east and west, 
Broad plain and mountain crest. 
But love Wisconsin best: 

Her praise prolong! 

Fair land of oak and pine, 
Of prairie, lake and mine, 

Our chosen state; 
United would we be. 
Our nation serve and thee, 
In loyal duty free 

God make thee great! 



Green Lake School Song 

Tune: Dixie. 
There's but one Green Lake in the whole 

countree, 
And that is the place that pleases me 

Best of all, best of all, best of all. 
Our Green Lake! 
Wisconsin state our town is found in, 
Good old state to get around in, 

Best of all, best of all, best of all, 
Wisconsin! 

Chorus for first stanza: 
I'm glad I'm in Wisconsin, 

Hurrah, hurrah! 
Wisconsin grand is my fair land, 
Our good old state Wisconsin 
Green Lake, Green Lake. 
In our good state Wisconsin; 

Green Lake, Green Lake, 
In our good state Wisconsin. 
II. 
We dailj^ climb with a hearty will 
To our tip-top school house on the hill, 

On the hill, on the hill, on the hill 
In Green Lake. 
Let the sun shine hot or the north wind blow 
We'll push our way through the heat or the snow 
Up the hill, up the hill, up the hill. 
In Green Lake. 
Chorus for second stanza: 
Wisconsin's in the Union, 

Hurrah, hurrah! 
The Union grand is my fair land; 
I'm glad I'm in the Union. 

Hurrah, hurrah, 
I'm glad I'm in the Union. 

Hurrah, Hurrah, 
I'm glad I'm in the Union. 



III. 

And when in the world our way we take 
We'll do as we did in old Green Lake, — 

Climb the hill, climb the hill, climb the hill 
With brave will 1 
Never loaf in the heat nor balk in the snow 
But with God's good help we will forward go; 
Push along, push along, push along. 
With a song I 

Chorus for third stanza: 
The best is all before us. 

Hurrah, hurrah! 
The whole world grand is our fair land 
With bright skies bending o'er us. 

Hurrah, hurrah ! 
The best is all before us; 

Hurrah, hurrah, 
The best is all before usi 



40 



Song of the Class of 1909, Green Lake 
High School 

TUNE— " DOWN THE LANE " 

Not a sad farewell we're singing, 

And our words are not of g-rief; 
Joy has set our voices ringing; 

We to-night are first and chief. 
We don't ask for sighs or pity, 

We've had four bright, happy years. 
We're not heroes but we're gritty 

And our future wakes no fears. 

Chorus: 

We're too happy to be dumb 

For the best is yet to come. 
O there's something best for every one of us. 

What it is we do not know, 

But as on in life we go 
We shall find God's best for each of us 

As on we go. 
Do you say this hour is fleeting? 

Why, it will forever live ! 
So we sing you cheerful greeting. 

And for these our thanks we give: — 
All the good our school has brought us; 

Home and friends and mem'ries dear; 
Motto by the Master taught us, 

"Do the right and no one fear!" 
Chorus: 



Convention Hymn 

The faith the fathers held we keep, 

And ours the task their hands laid down; 

The fields they sowed we till and reap; 
Bear summer's heat and winter's frown. 

But what the faith that once they taught, — 
Their guide in darkness, strength in storm? 

This, — let the word be unforgot, — 
God's changeless truth in changing form. 

What task was theirs? The outward deed 
That love impelled. Can ours be less? 

Learn well and share their hearts' great creed, 
Their eager joy to serve and blessi 



Dedication Hymn 

tune: mendebras. 

His feet shall press this threshold, 

His face give light within; 
He maketh here His blest fold 

And calleth wanderers in, 
Ask'st thou "Of whom this story?" 

Christ Jesus this is He 
Who Cometh with the lowly; 

Look, contrite heart, and see! 

Though earth and heaven are telling 

Thy wonders. Lord, and praise. 
We need Thy nearer dwelling 

In walls our hands may raise. 
Pill then this house with glory, 

Teach Thou our eyes to see 
Thy presence with the lowly 

In temple built for Thee! 

42 



Endeavor Consecration Hymn 

Where I may serve Thee best, O Master, 

Keep me or send. 
Life's days are passing fast and faster, 

Soon labor here must end. 
Joy is it, blessed Lord, to serve Thee 

Where Thou dost call: 
Mountain or pla-n or forest please me: 

Thing-s either great or small. 

chorus: 

Turn my life from self and sadness. 

Choose paths for me; 
Thy service, Lord, is joy and gladness 

Happy my walk with Thee, 

In brightest sunshine call to serve Thee; 

Call Thou in storm; 
Bid me to homes of those who need Thee 

Of known or unknown form; 
Call Thou to cities busy thronging, 

Or desert lone: 
Send me, with peace, to strife and wronging, 

Or to the sad heart's moan. 

chorus: 
Blessed the loving hand that saved me,— 

Hand pierced and torn. 
Blessed the tender heart that owned me 

Sinner condemned, forlorn. 
Thy loving kindness, it hath won me, 

Love all Thine own. 
And, Master, when in joy I meet Thee 

Let me not come alone ! 

chorus: 



43 



The Pledge in Song 

Tune: Ariel. Meribah or Bremen. 

This sacramental pledge I take, 
O Master, for Thy love's dear sake; 

For strength I trust in Thee. 
Thy truth I'll read in each day's light; 
Companion on Thy path of right 

I'll strive, my Lord, to be. 

My need shall seek Thy help in prayer: 
Thy church be mine in constant care; 

I'll go where'er she calls. 
Her worship, praise and words of grace 
Shall find me seeking Thy loved face 

Within her hallowed walls. 

Tho know'st how frail I am, O Lord, 
Gird me with courage as a sword. 

Teach Thou my hands to fight; 
Then through my life I'll faithful be, 
With true endeavor serving Thee 

In trial or delight. 

When they whose fellowship is mine 
Shall meet for prayer and song divine 

In honor, Lord, of Thee, 
Their joyous comradeship I'll seek, 
Some word of truth my lips shall speak; 

Amen; so let it bel 



44 



A Lakeside Walk in Winter Wind 

The pulses speed the eager feet. 

Each bound reveals a gleamed surprise. 

Look, look! Behold these doubled skiesl 
The blue above, with cloudlets fleet; 
The darker sky beneath that frowns 

With secrets of a silent world. 

(Ask not what ships, once tempest-whirled, 
Lie hidden there.) See jeweled crowns 
Of flashing light and changing form 

In maze magnificent proclaim 

The sovereign sway, the potent name 
Of leaping leagues of lake and storm. 

Tho toilers of the troubled sea 
Fling foaming fury on the sands; 
And quick the winter's frosted hands 

Seize waters, dashing wild and free. 

And change their captive drops to stone! 

. The fierce assailants of the shore 
Beat charge again, with angry roar, 

But thunders die in sobbing moan. 

The treacherous winds that, far at sea. 
Commanded strife 'gainst ship and coast, 
And armed the huge embattled host, 

Lead shoreward to the strife, then flee. 

The vanquished waters in defeat 
Burst high toward skies and icy day; 
The torrents fall in shining spray 

On crystal turrets that repeat 

From seams of ice, — an em'rald's flaws, — 
In strength renewed of winds' wild rush. 
The blows of blocks in crash and crush, 

Like grinding of a monster's jaws. 



What builders toil upon the shore 
Unwearied all the restless night, 
Unseen by stars or morning light? 

Whose was the deft, inventive lore, 

Constructive skill and grand design 

That built these arched and massive halls, 
These palaces and terraced walls 

Upreared in beauty all divine? 

And thus, the lake and land between, 

I journey for this winter day ; 

I dream not of the distant May. 
Let then these dunes bear scanty green; 
My joy is now the pageantry 

That diamonded these ancient sands, 

Reveals the work of unseen hands 
And walled a thousand miles of sea ! 

Tivo Rivers, February, 190S. 



46 



Wisconsin Spring 

Spring is a long continued fight 
'Twixt winter and the summer, 
There comes, perchance, a day's delight 
And next an Alaskan hummer. 

Amid our mixed and varied weathers, 
Half-frozen rain, and wind, and snow. 
The robin wishes for more feathers; 
Indeed he may, for aught I know. 
Wish for a "merry widow" hat 
To serve as shelter, house or home, 
Save that beneath so vast a dome 
He wouldn't know "where he was at !" 

But fields shall drink their cups of snow. 
The Arctic winds shall cease to blow; 
In mighty wrestle summer throw 
The tyrant winter; next how soon 
In long clear days at highest noon 
Will each one say with sweat on phiz 
"Whew, what a change! How hot it is!" 



The Wind of Yesterday 

Things flew that had no wings 

Just yesterday. 
The xarmers traded land, 
Mixed with a lot of sand, 

Just yesterday. 
The cheerful man who sings 
Of spring and such-like things 

Was silent yesterday. 
The man whose hat the wind blew off 
This morning has a dreadful cough. 

He got it yesterday. 
While running for his blamed old hat 
He could n't see "where he was at," 

Just yesterday. 
But got his mouth all filled with dust 
That came with tearing blast and gust; 
He almost felt that he would "bust" 

Just yesterday. 
He couldn't — sing — and would n't pray^ 

Just yesterday. 
The rooster, used to all the weathers. 
Is looking now to find his feathers; 

He lost them yesterday. 
This morning women groan and say: 
"Behold the work of yesterday I 
Bring broom and pan. Oh no. oh no. 
Was ever woman troubled so? 
They 're not enough. Just get the hoe.'^ 
Dousman, 1906, March, 22. 



48 



The Joke of the Season 

Said March to April, "What a joke 
'Twould be if I should take your cloak 

And wear the beauty of your face 
And you should run my furious race." 

"Agreed." said April, '-Now, for fan, 
I'll lend you, March, my glorious sun 

And take your northwest blizzards bold. 
Your snows, your frosts and all your cold." 

So March unlocked the doors of ice 
And creatures all from men to mice. 

Including robins on the trees. 
Were fooled by that enticing breeze 

Which April loaned to March. In turn 
She made us her deceits to learn. 

For sun she gave us shade and cloud 
And filled our ears with roarings loud. 

Her wolfish winds did bark and howl 
While we did little else but growl. 

So now to months perverse we say, 
"Don't either of you trade with May!" 

The Manse, April 17, 1907. 



With Apologies to the Sawdust City 

If a judge indictments quashing,. 
Were to give a squash a washing 
(Resting from his common labor 
Settling strife 'twixt man and neighbor), 
Would he call the water squash-wash 
Just to have a rhyme with Oshkosh? 
1906, January 22. 



Have You a Rhyme for Peshtigo? 

Peshtigo, Peshtigo! 

How the nimble trochees flow 

Seeking rhyme for Peshtigo, 

For the dactyl Peshtigo! 

"Mesh" I know, "mesh" I know: — 

Is this rhyme for Peshtigo? 

No; it is a sonant sin 

Not to have the t sound in 

And these "meshes" lack the "t;" 

Surely that's a grief to me. 

I may dive or swim or climb 

For that longed-for triple rhyme, 

For that most elusive chime 

But must ask your help for I'm 

Meshed I know, meshed I know, 

Hunting rhymes for Peshtii^o. 

Try once more: Refreshed I go 

With two rhymes for Peshtigo! 



My Neighbor's Chickens 

The following verses expresses no grievance of my own. 
I could not ask for more considerate neighbors, But all 
gardeners are not so fortunate, and it is for their sake and 
at the suggestion of one of them that these lines were 
written. 

Sometimes I say "The dickens! 

There are my neighbor's chickens!' 

My neighbor I like well 

But — let me grievance tell — 

I do not like his chickens. 

Save when he bids me to a roast 

And plays the part of kindly host. 

50 



My garden is most dear to me 
From carrot bed to apple tree 
And so my patience sickens 
When I behold the chickens 
In it and scratching merrily. 
Dark gloom grows darker, thickens, 
In looking at those chickens. 

A certain scientific man 

Once called the hen "A feeble bird.'' 

It is, I'm sure, on no such plan 

My neighbor's hens are built; the word 

"Feeble'" to them does not apply. 

I wish Professor would stand by 

And see those hens make mulching fly 

Or let him watch them as they eat 

My cauliflower choice and sweet, 

Or gorge themselves on berries fine; 

The way they always do with mine. 

They run on their destructive feet 

From stalk to stalk, from vine to vine, 

Or scratch as if they dug a mine. 

And so, my neighbor, won't you, please, 
My cares dispel, my troubles ease, 
By keeping all your hens at home? 
Soon, soon the very earth will freeze 
And then the fowls at large may roam. 
So I'll not need the pen of Dickens 
To tell my horror of your chickens! 



To Mr. Carnagie's Spelling Reform 
Association 

There was a man who had the ague, 
He thought it was a dreadful plague. 
His home was in a town named Prague, 
His name was Robert Allen Sprague. 



The school ma'am said to Johnny Bright 

"The word 'potatoes' — spell it right.'' 

Now "dough" on just the day before 

Had sent John shamefaced from the floor, 

But he had learned his lesson well, 

"P-o" his tongue began to tell, 

"O-u-g-h"— that's "po" I'm sure, 

(How good it is to know a cure 

For spelling bad!) and "a" in "eight"— 

"E-i g-h" as sure as fate, 

With "t" prefixed it must spell "ta." 

I'm sure that's just as clear as day; 

And "beaux"— that teaches me right well 

The last part of my word to spell. 

And now I'll drop my crooked verse 

And turn to prose or something worse. 

This is the way my mind is bent 

To spell the product esculent: 

P-o U'g-h-t-e i g-h t e-a-u-x. 

Potatoes ! 

A man came in while clerk was out 

And spelled a name; of that no doubt 

"P-h-t-h" and "o-l-o." 

The clerk perplexed thought "Read that slow.'^ 

"P-h-t-h," and "o-l o," "g-n."' "y-rr" and "h." 

"A Russian surely" thought the clerk 

With visions of a bomb or dirk. 

The stranger then appeared in view 

"I beg your pardon, sir, will you 

Pronounce your name? I'm sure that few 

52 



To this hotel have ever come 

With name I could not frame to some 

Syllabicated utterance clear 

But yours I can't pronouce, I fear." 

^'My name," the stranger prompt replied, 

"Is simply 'Turner;' I've defied 

The spelling books to show I'm wrong." 

Add now, in mingled prose and song 

Let's show according to what plan, 

His name was spelled by this bad man 

The "t" he sounded as in "phthisic," 

And 'colonel" gave him "o l-o," 

*'G-n" you find in ''sign," "allign,'' 

'Y-r r-h" is seen in "myrrh.'' 

The gasping clerk said "Thank you, sir! 

I'll give you number nignty-nign 

And serve you neither beer nor wign 

And hope your wronged and mispelled name 

Will guide you into sense and fame." 



A Suggested Ending for One of James 
Whitcomb Riley's Poems 

Nobody on the old farm now but mother, an' me, an' 

John; 
But I guess that state of things ain't going to keep 

right on 
For we all go to church in the morning, and John in 

the evening, too. 
^'They need me to sing," he says, and that, I suppose, 

is true; 
And the girl that plays the organ — Well, all the 

neighbors say 
John's horse don't head for home any more but always 

the other wav I 



53 



Carpet Beating 

Thump, thump! This rug 's the worst one yet. 

A fool would swear, a child would fret. 

But what's the sense of all complaining? 

"It'shot;" "It's cold;" " 'Twill soon be raining;" 

"The dust is like a cloud;" "I fear 

Those microbes ever coming near." 

At no one time can all those things 

Be true, and so the wise man sings: 

"Thump on, thump on! Keep time, keep time; 

Your blows should make a kind of rhyme. 

Thump, thump, for there's a near by pump 

With water plenty, if a lump 

Form in the doorway of the throat. 

So then, thump on! Throw off your coat. 

Thump, thump, and think how school boys 

jump. 
Whack, whack, thump, thump, whack, whack, 

thump, thump." 
Don't say that this is woman's work 
You lazy, good-for-nothing shirk. 
A white man, you can bet your life. 
Is not ashamed to help his wife. 
A Mohawk might be or a Sioux; 
But surely, friend, not I nor you. 

And yet there is a kind of pleasure 

In cleansing beat and rhythmic measure. 

The work must needs be done, and I 

May have the fun and make things fly. 

So thump and whack, and whack and thump. 

Don't whine, don't growl, don't be a gump. 

For much that's good, as I shall tell. 

Is in your task, so do it well. 

Here'o carpet-beater's joy. You've guessed it? 



54 



Thank God for friends whose feet have pressed it 

(This "it" means carpet, not the ]oy, 

You keen-wit girl, you high school boy !) 

And so we'll make our carpet-beating 

A right good chance for hearty greeting 

To all who step upon our floors. 

To all who come within our doors. 

Yet last I'll say, with rev'rent meaning 
Thank heaven and man for vacuum cleaning ! 



The Steam Thresher 

Whistle's call and the men's prompt stir, 
"Chuh, chuh, chuh, bhurr-urr-urr." 
Bundled grain in the pitchfork's grip 
Tossed to the curved knives' slash and rip. 

"Chuh, chuh, chuh, bhurr-urr urr," 
The engine's gasp and the ihresher's whirr. 
Steel toothed cylinder's countless knocks, 
Throbbing sieve and the full grain-box. 

Measured bulk of the ripened grain 
(Harvest toil hath not been in vain), — 
Rye, or oats, or the hard-brown, wheat, — 
Hurries the tread of the carriers' feet. 

Ceaseless stream of the beaten straw 
Poured to the blower's greedy maw. 
Caught in the long pipe's blast and gust. 
Borne to the stack in a storm of dust. 

Honor inventive skill and thought; 

Honor the hands that have shaped and wrought; 

Honor the farmer's toil and vim! 

Praise Lord of all in our threshers' hymn! 

55 



On a Bill for "The Doane Owl" 

(A College Paper) 

How to make '"The Owl" much better? 
Loose the bird from every fetter 
Of the chain of debt, and let her 
Wing her course all unimpeded, 
Money is the thing that's needed. 
Be my admonition heeded. 

Other ways are mere illusion, 
Ending only in confasion, 
Put away such vain delusion. 

Toil and trade your purses fill. 
Pay you then that "little bill," 
(Overdue?) with right good will. 

If you heed this needed preaching 
And the plaintive "Owl's" beseeching, 
Soon that bird will cease her screeching! 

And in gentle notes and low 
Tell you where alumni go. 
Bring you word of joy or woe. 

Here's the cash for my subscription. 
Let me the collector's grip shun 
And all things of description! 

Aid the students' enterprise 
Till their pockets and their eyes 
Both bulge out in great surprise. 

Then they'll treat "The Owl" right well; 
Write much better; and, — don't tell, — 
They may even learn to spell! 



On Reading of a $200,000 Crown Given 
by a Brewer to His Wife 

Beer, bier, 
Spell it as the Eng-lish do:_ 
Spell it as the Germans do 
(That I'm sure fits like a shoe); 

Beer, bier. 
'Twixt the two come Bright's disease. 
Weakened heart and things like these. 
Hear pneumonia's dying- cry; 
Feel lumbago's pains and see 
Coarseness in the face and eye; 
Beer and fouler things agree! 
Brewer, give your wife a crown; 
Drinker, see your wife bent down 
Washing other women's clothes. 
Paying for your own red nose 
And the other woman's crown! 
Hear the wail of such a wife 
Mourning o'er her saddened life: 
"Two hundred thousand in that crown! 
How many women in your town 
And mine have paid its shameful price! 
Our gold is brass; our diamonds, ice. 
Above the diamonds in that crown 
I see the tear-drops trickle down! 

O beer, O beer. 
For me thou hast no gift to cheer. 
Accurst those diamonds and the beer!" 



57 



For the Young Folks at Hill Crest 

Go, go, 

Drifts of snow; 
O fall, brown leaves. 
From the old oak trees; 
Blow, south wind, blow I 

I want the Hill Crest lawn to show 
A happy girl, a laughing boy. 
They're always filled with glee and joy. 
Now who's that girl and who's that boy? 

That girl with bonnie, cheerful face? 

Why, that's Miss Grace! 
The boy? Well, well! Now give me time! 
He has a name not meant for rhyme! 

They call him Tompie. He's all right! 

He'll come when June's blue skies are 
bright! 



Visions Given by a Voice 

The reader turned the centuries back; 
We breathed the new world's atmosphere; 
Saw huntsm.en on the wild boar's track; 
Heard Norsk winds whistle loud and clear; 
With Shakespeare walked by Avon's stream; 
Saw Milton, blind for freedom's sake: 
Heard Bunyan tell his wondrous dream: 
Heard thunders roll on Leman's lake. 



58 



The Song of the Needle 

Great Homer sang- Achilles' wrath 
And also traced the crooked path 
That brought Ulysses to his home 
Through treacherous seas and billows' foam. 
In Latin verse good Vergil told 
The story of his hero bold. 
Italian Dante bids us know 
The horrors of the world below ; 
And English Milton wrote on themes 
Beyond our ken, above our dreams. 
Pope bantered one who he called fair 
About a cut-off lock of hair. 
"The sofa," Cowper said, "I sing;" 
And, "my barbaric yawp I fling 
O'er all the world," Walt Whitman wrote. 
And now may I attempt a note? 
May I the honored needle praise, 
And tell its use in humble lays; 
I who have held it in disdain 
And said "To sew is always pain?" 
Repentant now, on duty bent, 
I take the humble instrument 
And make its usefulness my own 
Without a sigh, complaint or groan. 
And so, with neither fear nor dread 
I'll write my song in lines of thread! 
1907, April, nth. 



59 



The Academy's Soldier 

Inspired by the splendid enthusiasm of Principal Toan, of 
Rochester Academy: 

Is this the new word: We must teach boys to fight? 
Have we taught them to do things but not to do right, 
Left them weak in their powers of choice and decision, 
Compelled them to learn mathematic precision 
Without application to duty or life? 

And, knowing full well the world's contest and strife, 
Have we failed to teach boys who are foes, who are friends, 
What enemy wars and what Captain defends? 
Have we sent out young soldiers unarmed and untrained 
To a struggle wherein all is lost or is gained? 



60 



A Scene Depicted on the Shield Made by 
Hephaestus for Achilles 

Iliad xviii. 593-606. 
Unmarried youths and maidens for whose sake 
Their ardent wooers to the parents gave 
Of cattle numerous gifts; these all there danced 
With hands close clasped upon each others' wrists. 
The maidens finest of fine linen wore. 
The young men also were in linen clad, — 
Close-fitting garments made with oil to gleam 
On polished surface of the well- wove cloth. 
Wreaths beautiful the maidens wore; the youths 
Had knives they used at sacrifice or feast. 
These gilded were, these knives of peaceful use, 
By silvered baldric from the shoulder hung. 

Youths, maids, ran lightly on their well trained 

feet; — 
As craftsman seated at ceramic art 
Sets potter's wheel awhirl between his palms, 
A trial making of its speed and worth;— 
They formed swift circles in the mazy dance. 
At one time youths, at other graceful maids 
Haste into ranks athwart each others' course. 

Delighted to their hearts' content a throng 
Stood round about the love-inspiring dance 
Wherein two gymnasts led like whirling wheels. 
Now touching earth with feet and now with hands. 



A Parable of Hope 

Beneath the ice and fold of snow 
Imprisoned, yet in endless flow. 
The clear, pure waters come and go. 

The winter's touch hath power to bind 
As death may hide the heart and mind, 
Yet stream and soul their own shall find. 

At evening time there shall be light 
For us alone the solemn night. 
Beyond the evening, dawn's delight. 

Be these thy parables divine 

For comfort of that grief of thine; 

The eve grows dark that dawns may shine. 

For those set free as is the light , 
The eve and morning blend in sight 
Where home and heaven their joys unite! 



Believe 

I walked upon the wave-wet sand. 
Dividing line 'twixt lake and land. 
And heard the whitened billows break: 
Then said a voice like His who spake 
To John of old by Patmos' sea, 
^'Believe on me." "Believe on me." 



To My Neighbors at Hill Crest 

Shall I do dear Sam a wrong" 
If I write no little song 
Telling how he pleases Grace. 
Brings the light to Tompie's f^ce, 
Shares their play or runs a race, 
Merry all about the place? 

No; I'd do the duck no wrong 

If I failed to make the song. 

He'll not care for verse or rhyme. 

But this pleasant summer-time 

I have seen my little neighbors, 

Happy in their kindly labors 

Making Sam and others glad. 

So I say, "God bless the lad; 

Bless the lassie;" and I know 

That the love to Sam they show 

Makes their own hearts richer, truer; 

Makes the sky seem brighter, bluer; 

Makes them to us all a joy 

(I mean duck, and girl, and boy). 

So I'd surely do a wrong 
If I did not say in song 
To loved Tompie and Miss Grace 
(Merry all about the place) 
That their duck 's important, quite. 
With his new-grown feathers white; 
But the more important thing 
Is their love; of this I sing! 
1909 Summer. 



63 



To Mr. H. B. Lowe 
On the Eighty-fourth Anniversary of His Birth 

Son, daughter, daughter's child and loving wife 
Have privilege this day we may not share. 
Nearest thy heart are they, part of thy life. 
Chief joy by right is theirs, but they will bear 
The kindly meant intrusion of thy friends 
Who bring their heartfelt wishes for thy joy. 
We claim as ours one on whom Worth attends; 
High worth with cheer as of a happy boy: 
High worth of character and its crown of years: 
Thus claim we thee as ours, thou citizen. 
Once soldier, always patriot. Who hears 
Thy name and does not see thee with the men 
Who saved our Union and endangered flag. 
Whose courage did not fail nor ardor lag? 

Our land is holier, for it caught thy blood 

In battle that was part of sad defeat 

Fought where high hills guard Rappahanock's flood 

And still the fame of Washington repeat: 

That blushed in blood at foul Secession's rage; 

At Slavery, relic of a darkened age. 

What years those were of battle! Live, live on. 

Give us the spirit of the mighty deeds 

Of which thou wast a part; of heroes gone. 

Be inspiration: for our land still needs 

The service of the story and the song 

That celebrate high triumph over wrong. 

The Manse, 

Nineteen Tfiirteen, May iift/i. 



A Plea for " Pleaded " 

Lines suggested by the use of "plecV in an article enti- 
tled "The State Convention," published in "Our Church 
Life." for October, 1898. 

O Editor! Dear Doctor Kidder! 

"Pled" is a term that ranks with "widder," 

With "hain't'' and "right smart chance of 

corn." 
(Don't these arouse your wrath and scorn?) 
Respectable as "Wed?" Oh no. 
With honest "fed" it can not go. 
O ye who ate good mother's bread, 
Was it from dough that once she ' 'kned?" 
The slippers for your comfort made 
With figures queer in beads displayed — 
Ye know, ye advocates of "pled," 
Those slippers "beaded ' are not "bed." 
Are not these words from Bunyan needed 
"It stood as if with men it pleaded?" 
Ye who conform to Scripture law 
In Samuel read. Ye '11 find no flaw 
In the translators' English there 
Kept by revisers' thought and care. 
Read, too, in Lamentations sad 
And where Ezekiel maketh glad. 
O be my words of warning heeded, 
And henceforth write not "pled" but "pleaded." 

The Bible passages referred to above are the following: 
I. Samuel 25:39. 
Lamentation 3 :58. 

Ezekiel 20:39. Here, however, the American committee 
has substituted "entered into judgment." 



65 



In Memory of Professor Joseph Emerson 

Whom the Beloit boys called Zeus. 
Again these happy summer days I read 
That ever-living- tale of Ilium: — 
Atrides Agamemnon, king of men. 
By impious deed brings evil on the camp 
And rouses wrath in wronged Achilles' breast 
For whose dear sake Thetis to Zeus appeals. 
But when that magic name I dwell upon 
I see a nobler Zeus who with us walked. 
Companion yet supreme. O towering hight, 
Of living sculpture fashioned by the touch 
That Grecian culture gives a Christian soul. 
Thou art my Zeus, my potent Jupiter ! 
In honor of thy stately majesty, 
Of form and bearing and profoundest thought, 
With warmth of heart that clothed these all 

with life, 
I offer this poor tribute to thy fame. 
A flower to bloom upon thy tomb and die. 



66 



Christmas Spirit 

One time at least in every year 
Each man's a Christian, has no fear 
Of being thought unduly good 
When saying "I've done all I could 
To make all hearts about me glad, 
To cheer each girl and merry lad. 
To see that none in town shall lack 
For roast in pan and flour in sack." 
Now that's the generous way to act. 
But let me tell an important fact: 
It's often easier to be kind 
Than just; and justice is not blind 
As some have pictured: he has eyes 
Who's wisely just and justly wise. 
So then be generous as we must 
If like our Master we would be. 
To be like Him both kind and just; 
To heal the hurt and wrong we see 
Is worth our trying all the year. 
You can be both so don't you fear ! 
Learn this lesson from my song: 
Keep Christmas spirit all year long. 



67 



Our Summer School of Only Three 

Respectfully inscribed to Mr. and Mrs, Henry Pope, of Chicago and Green Lake. 
I will write you a record in rhyme for our girl; 
I will sing you a story in song" for our boy. 
That is easy; for Margaret truly is Pearl. 
And our Henry at home and at Green Lake is joy. 
And there's one dear as each to the other, I'm sure: 
That's our own brother William; for blues perfect cure. 

One was reading in Homer of Trojans and Greeks; 

Of Achilles and Hector, Ulysses and Zeus. 

And one read ''Black Beauty," a sermon that seeks 

All our horses to guard from neglect and abuse. 

And between us and Sly apples hung on a tree 

Near enough, one would think, to hear "Beauty's" wise plea. 

Did our Margaret sometimes put thoughts into rhyme? 
If she did need I say that a song is no crime? 
Oh, the stories of circus, golf , fishing and play 
That were told on the caligraph day after day I 
Now we're ready for long winter's work and good cheer 
And for all that will make this a happy school year. 
Green Lake Manse, 1912. 



68 



Mary Leavitt 

On the south side of Scotland's famous 
Clyde near where that stream, there scarcely 
larger than a good-sized brook, ceases to be 
affected by the tide, stands the ancient Scot- 
tish borough which its people call Ruglen. 
But if you wish to find it on the map or in 
the encyclopoedia look for "Rutherglen," the 
only form of the name in print. Once within 
its municipal limits it included Glasgow, of 
which it is now practically a suburb or a 
part. 

In Rutherglen there was dwelling in 1828 
a young man John Nelson whose ancestors 
had been shepherds in the Highlands, the re- 
gion that has produced so much of mighty 
manhood and womanhood. His wife Mar- 
garet Correns was a woman of rare delicacy 
of character as well as strength of character. 
She was of a family that had come from the 
Galloway region of Scotland. 

In August of 1828, as the second day thereof 
was at its beginning, their first-born was 
given to these parents, and to her they gave 
the blessed Bible name of Mary. As soon as 
she could learn anything she was taught to 
obey God and her parents. These were not 
members of what they probably regarded as 
the somewhat lax and worldly Established 
Church of Scotland but of the Relief Church, 
a body which in asserting the right of a con- 
gregation to choose its own minister had 
been compelled to separate from the Estab- 



lishment. Under the evangelical and some- 
what austere discipline of the Relief Kirk, now 
part of the United Free Church of Scotland, 
Mary was early taught that the chief reason 
for living is that we may "glorify God and 
enjoy Him forever." Strong teaching to give 
a child, you may say. Yes, it takes strong 
teaching to make men and women strong: — 
and it does it. 

In the home the character of Mary's 
mother was impressed, naturally in a special 
degree, upon her eldest child. But the 
parting between them came all too soon, for 
on a summer's day, a little more than a month 
before Mary was fourteen years old, the 
mother could no longer care even for the 
baby Joseph, a part of whose life-story is told 
on one of the pages of this book. Seventy 
years after the event, a nephew of Mrs. Nel- 
son, the late William Ross, of Butler, Mis- 
souri, recalled a circumstance of her illness. 
He remembered crying because he saw that 
her long and beautiful hair had been cut off. 
Though she was then in a state of delirium 
or on the verge of it, she would comfort him 
and said: "Dinna greet" (don't cry). But 
there was reason for tears. On the 2nd of 
July, 1842, the mother was taken from her 
children. Mary took, so far as such a child 
could, her mother's place. There were then 
two sisters, Margaret and Elizabeth; and 
four brothers, John, James, William and 
Joseph. Another boy, Robert, had died in 
infancy. 

Soon the Ruglen home was broken up for- 
ever. To it had come from New York City, 
Mrs. Mary Wilson, a sister of the dead 
mother. The father decided to remove to 

70 



America. The aunt helped prepare the chil- 
dren for the voyage and did not end her ser- 
vice for them with their arrival hither. 
Blessed be her memory for her deeds of love 
even though they were sometimes done in 
harsh ways. God grant that she may find in 
Paradise a tenderness that her training taught 
her not to give. 

It was in November that Mr. Nelson with 
his children and sister in-law sailed in the 
packet-ship Sheridan from Liverpool for New 
York. The seven weeks' voyage that brought 
them thither was to Mary a time of sea- 
sickness and misery. At New York they 
stayed for the winter. 

In the spring of 1843, perhaps in May, Mr. 
Nelson with Mrs. Wilson and another sister 
of his late wife, and their mother, started for 
Fairplay, Wisconsin, whither they had been 
invited by a friend, Mr. George Arnott, one 
of the multitudinous "prospectors" in the 
Galena lead region. Bringing the children 
our emigrants went via the Erie canal to 
Buffalo and the Great Lakes to Chicago, then 
a stuck-in-the mud village that was not to be 
compared in prosperity and wealth with Ga- 
lena. At Chicago Mr. Nelson, like many an- 
other, received the offer of a lot if he would 
only stay and build and, also like many an- 
other, he declined the offer. To Galena he 
and his company pressed on, the older people 
riding in wagons, and the children alternately 
riding and walking. When in June, 1904, 
on our way to the Doane College commence- 
ment at which two of her grandchildren were 
to be graduated, we were gliding in a Pullman 
westward from Chicago, our mother spoke 
of the contrast between the two journeys, 



and recalled the beauty of the prairies and 
their flowers in that far-off early summer. 
Yet she missed the richer fragrance of the 
Scottish blossoms, though she rejoiced 
in America's clearer and more brilliant 
skies. 

From Galena Mr. Nelson went to Fairplay, 
a now almost non-existent mining village in 
Grant county, where he made his home until 
his death in 1860. 

Miss Nelson's first marriage was in 1846 to 
George Bennett Davidson, a native of the 
parish of Keith, Banffshire, Scotland. He 
was a writer of some local repute, and his 
name is to be found in "Poole's Index." He 
was a miner and smelter, and was much in- 
terested in politics. He would read aloud on 
winter evenings from the "Congressional 
Globe," the predecessor of the present 
"Congressional Record." Thereby our 
mother became much disgusted with the 
tone and manner of the Southern leaders of 
that day. Perhaps, also, this education pre- 
pared her to become, as she did, an advocate 
of woman suffrage. Mr. Davidson was one 
of those who supported Van Buren and 
Adams in the famous Free Soil campaign of 
1848. 

Into this newly made home came the sor- 
row that is suggested by Tennyson's line: 
"I wept like a child for the babe that was 
dead before it was born." 

The second child was the writer of this 
sketch; the third a girl-babe who met an 
accidental death just as her father was 
starting on the journey from which he never 
returned. Mr. Davidson died in the South 
Pass of the Rocky Mountains while on his 



way to California. The mournful tidings of 
his death came to the widow from the pen of 
her brother John, who is still a resident of 
Oakland, California. 

Part of Mrs. Davidson's widowhood she 
spent in her father's home. There in 1851, 
her sister Margaret was married. For a 
time Mrs. Davidson and her second brother, 
James, made a home together. In 1853 their 
father made a second marriage. Thus Agnes 
McKinlay, a native of Dunfermline, Scot- 
land, became my "grandmother" before she 
was anybody's mother. What wealth of 
Scottish story was at her command! How 
much she could tell of King Robert the 
Bruce whose bones rest in the Abbey church 
of her native city! She was always ready 
to sing Burns's song about the battle of Ban- 
nockburn, and gave me a love that was 
greater, I fear, than I ever deserved from her. 

To this "grandmother" the blessedness of 
motherhood was not denied. On the 22nd of 
August, 1854, there was born to Mr. and 
Mrs. Nelson, a daughter to whom — the moth- 
er's only child,— was given the baptismal 
name of Euphemia Davidson. In her eldest 
sister this child found also a second and 
younger mother. 

After a widowhood of some years Mrs. 
Davidson was married, 1855, January 1st, to 
James Leavitt, a native of Shipton, Lower 
Canada (now the Province of Quebec). What 
Mr. Leavitt was, mentally and in character, 
is indicated by the fact that "The Independ- 
ent,"— in the old days of the anti-slavery 
conflict as distinguished from abolitionism,— 
had first place in the periodical literature of 
his new home. Representatives of his family 



had fought in the war that won the independ- 
ence of the United States. That he had been 
born in Canada was almost an accident; in 
cast of mind and in mechanical ingenuity and 
otherwise, he was a true son of New England. 
Not unstable in disposition or habit, he yet had 
found home in New Hampshire and Cali- 
fornia; in Boston and Chicago. A previous 
marriage had left him with a daughter who 
was still a child. 

The newly constituted family was soon es- 
tablished on a hill farm in Grant county, 
Wisconsin; a farm whence one could almost 
see the Mississippi as it sweeps past the mag- 
nificent, bluff-walled amphitheater wherein 
Dubuque, Iowa, is built. While coming 
thence one February day, and when near his 
home with a load of lumber, Mr. Leavitt 
was accidentally killed by being thrown 
from his wagon as it slipped on an icy road 
and was overturned. The cries of her chil- 
dren brought Mrs. Leavitt to the spot where 
her husband lay dead. She was not crushed 
under the fearful blow but endured as seeing 
Him who is invisible. Her younger son was 
then not four years old, and soon there was 
born a daughter who never saw her father's 
face. 

Then came years of hard work upon the 
undeveloped and unproductive farm. But 
notwithstanding her unremitting toil Mrs. 
Leavitt never became so much absorbed in 
making a living as to forget the greater 
duty of making a life or, rather of making 
lives. That abundant life which Jesus came 
to give, as He Himself said, was in some 
measure her own, and she would have others 
blessed with it. Yet in the deep things of 



religion she had the reserve that is the 
usual accompaniment of a reverent and 
humble mind. She had reasons for the faith 
that was in her, but was not given to argu- 
ment or disputation. She was loved by all 
her neighbors nearly all of which were 
Roman Catholics. The four miles of up-hill- 
and-down that lay between home and their 
church did not keep the Leavitt family from 
public worship and Sabbath school. In the 
mother the pastor found one of his most 
faithful helpers and the school an efficient 
teacher. She was steadfast in the cause of 
temperance and was once a member of the 
order of Good Templars. She believed in 
walking circumspectly and would not have 
playing cards in her house. Yet she was 
willing that her children should go occa- 
sionally to the circus though she let others 
go along to take care of them. She did not 
judge harshly those whose convictions and 
practices were different from her own, but 
on the contrary found among them some of 
her best friends. Though women did not 
vote then in school meetings, she was influ. 
ential in having a new district formed. Be- 
fore this was done she had been the teacher 
of her own children. She was a dutiful citi- 
zen, and stood for the public welfare as 
against private greed in the proposed closing 
of a good road and the substituting for it of 
an exceedingly bad one. Under her personal 
care one of the best orchards in the town 
grew up on her farm. So she lived, faithfully, 
usefully. 

It was in the early part of this period of 
her life, indeed the year after her husband's 
death, that Mrs. Leavitt lost her father. Not 



75 



long thereafter the home that had been his 
was broken up. So by an inheritance of re- 
sponsibility, and not less by her own warmth 
of affection and force of character, Mrs. 
Leavitt's house became the headquarters of 
her father's family and kindred. Here they 
and their children, in times of transition, 
found something more than welcome. Nor 
was such kindness as this limited to those of 
her own blood. 

From this little home of large hospitality 
there went to a soldier's service and a 
soldier's death Mrs. Leavitt's youngest 
brother, Joseph Nelson, the one who as a babe 
was left motherless in Rutherglen. This 
home his older brother William, so lately 
added to the silent majority, also considered 
as his, and to it he returned from the living 
death of Libby prison, of Danville, Ander- 
sonville and Florence. A cousin also who, 
to these men and their sister was like a 
brother, went from Mrs. Leavitt's home, and 
to his younger brother its doors were always 
opened as to one who had a right there, 
The sister's tears and prayers of that time 
are among the traditions and memories of 
her children. She wept when Lincoln was 
slain, and rejoiced when the war and slavery, 
the foul cause of it, came to an end together. 

Mrs. Leavitt, who was a fine reader and 
lover of books, and had used well the limited 
opportunities of education that came to her, 
especially the study of the Bible, was de- 
termined that her children should have, if 
they wished it, a training beyond that of the 
common schools. So she aided the going to 
Beloit College of her eldest son, and after 
he had gone to Crete, Nebraska, to be teacher 



as well as student in Doane College, she re- 
moved to Crete where she became matron of 
Doane College, a position which she filled for 
sixteen years. None find it so difficult to love 
college students as those do who have to feed 
them, and the fact that Mrs. Leavitt did 
both is evidence that her affection was founded 
upon principle and not upon impulse. 

In August, 1897, she came to Two Rivers, 
Wisconsin, to make a home with her daugh- 
ter and the elder of her two sons. There as 
everywhere she made warm friends; there as 
everywhere she wrought effectively and 
wisely. One thing at Two Rivers she did 
not like: The moaning-, so constantly heard, 
of the waters of our great inland sea. But 
there she found those who in love became as 
her own children. 

In 1901, Mrs. Leavitt removed to Dousman, 
a place in the beautiful lake region of Wis- 
consin. She was there at a time interesting 
in the development of the church and the 
community; the time when the Wisconsin 
Farm School for boys was removed thither. 
To this institution she could render no special 
service, but her heart went out in sympathy 
to the boys, so many of them motherless. At 
Dousman, as everywhere, sympathy and 
friendship were the words written by her 
kindly deeds upon the hearts of her neigh- 
bors, and she found the time of her abiding 
there one of happiness. Moreover at Dousman 
she had a new experience: meeting that most 
worthy woman, .Madam Caroline Elizabeth 
Merrick, of New Orleans, Louisiana, author of 
"Old Times in Dixie Land," a book of power 
and wise radicalism. During the war for the 
Union, her husband, Edwin Thomas Mer- 



rick, a native of Massachusetts, was Chief 
Justice of the Supreme Court of his adopt- 
ed state. Madam Merrick was at Dous- 
man with the family of her son, Edwin T. 
Merrick. The new things to Mrs. Leavitt in 
these friendships was the point of view that 
they gave her of the war for the Union. 
Here were friends who were loyal citizens 
and had been Confederates, a woman who had 
been mistress of slaves and was glad of 
emancipation; and was, moreover, an ad- 
mirer of Frances Willard, a member of the 
Woman's Christian Temperance Union and a 
believer in woman suffrage! True hearts 
soon learn to understand each other. 

In 1905 Mrs. Leavitt's household removed 
to Green Lake, Wisconsin, where friendship 
toward her and her own in return was al- 
most a touchstone of character. She had the 
joy of seeing young people whom she loved 
pass through high school, and a whole or part 
of the course inRipon College. A winter, that 
of 1910-11, passed at Hollywood. California, 
probably prolonged her life. She was guest 
there of Mrs. and Mr. William Nelson Kil- 
bourn, eldest son and daughter-in law of 
Mrs. Leavitt's youngest sister; on her return, 
guest of her brother at Salt Lake City; of 
her niece, Mrs. Arthur Parmalee, at Denver; 
of her son Edwin, at Crete, Nebraska. 
There her granddaughter still mourned the 
death of a little child, the first great-grand- 
child of Mrs. Leavitt's own blood. But her 
step-daughter's grandchild had been with 
his mother, in the Green Lake home and 
was, in affection, her very own. 

Though every place was made a home to 
the venerable mother, she longed like a 

78 



child for her own home. There with re- 
newed interest she took up once more the 
round of duty lessened by her failing' 
strength. Still she rendered to the sick and 
to others such service as she could give. She 
was prepared in mind and heart for changes. 
It did not startle nor alarm her when a 
friend, Mr. Edward Dike who sat at her 
table on the last Lord's day of his life, was 
suddenly taken away. Nor was there dis- 
tress or fear when her son was unexpectedly 
summoned to the funeral of a friend of al- 
most her own age, Mr. Alonzo Cragin, of 
Joplin, Missouri. She mourned indeed for his 
wife who, for the lifetime of a generation, had 
l^een sister rather than merely friend; for 
their children who were loved almost as her 
own. Many. a summer vacation had found 
them on the hills of the. old Grant county 
farm. 

Before the son's return Mrs. Leavitt had 
reached the eighty-fourth anniversary of 
her birth. Almost from that very time her 
strength manifestly failed. Her times of 
rest became more prolonged; her movements 
less active; her calls and visits fewer. Yet 
in one way she kept either her mind or her 
muscles busy. She still felt responsibility, 
still desired to serve, still tried to make all 
about her happy. Thus autumn passed into 
winter. Even in .January she still was able 
on its first Lord's day to prepare her sick 
daughter's breakfast and to take it up stairs. 
But that day she received the communion of 
the Lord's supper in her own home instead 
of in the church. 

She strove, though not complainingly, 
against the limitation of her activity. She 



made ready to attend the annual business 
meeting of the church, but the ab- 
normal action of her heart forbade her doing 
so. However, a few days thereafter, she was 
able to go out once more, and called on a 
sick neighbor, a soldier's widow, Mrs. Davis; 
at the home of a veteran crippled in battle^ 
Mr. H. B. Lowe, and that of still another, 
Mr. David Wilson, whose niece was an 
especially valued friend of her own. Only a 
few days more was she able even to go about 
the house. It was characteristic, that the 
last time she left her own room it was to 
prevent the need of waking her daughter 
who, in care of the mother, had been deprived 
of sleep the night before. Almost her only 
complaint was ''Oh, I'm so useless." 

Soon she wished that her son Edwin be 
sent for, and he promptly came. She knew 
that the end was not far off. "We have 
had a happy home together," she said in 
one of the last days of her life. We who 
write these words thank all who have helped 
make it so; they are many, very many. We 
add our thanks for the kindness done her and 
us during her decline and since her death. 

The ending was not in pain but in weak- 
ness. On Wednesday morning, February 
19th, she seemed to follow the reading of 
psalm CXXC, a part of which she had re- 
peated some days before. The day passed 
with no increase of hope to those who cared 
for her. The daughter and younger brother 
retirod for needed rest. The mother lay 
quietly, sometimes as if in sleep. After she 
cea-ed to speak to those who watched, she 
stretched her hands upward saying, "Come? 
come; now, now." At the appointed time, 

80 



eleven o'clock, she took medicine, but a little 
after midnig-ht it seemed best to call those 
who slept. At ten minutes after two o'clock 
in the morning the sound of her low breath- 
ing was heard no more. (February 20, 1913). 

A memorial service was held that after- 
noon in the church where for seven years 
and more she had been a worshiper, Her 
body was taken to Crete for burial. There 
the funeral party was met by many friends 
among whom was the acting president of 
the college. A second service was held in 
the beautiful church of Crete, and, on Sat- 
urday afternoon, February 22d, in Riverside 
cemetery, close to the grave of her friend 
and associate of many years. President Perry 
of the college, we laid her body to its final 
rest. 

Mrs. Leavitt was a victor in the struggle 
of life. Seventy years of active service 
were hers, and she rejoiced in usefulness and 
responsibility. Great things that she prayed 
for, toiled for, and gave for, came to pass. 

She saw betterment in the condition of all 
who toil; she saw also a larger wage for the 
workman, and more of gain for the farmer; she 
saw the schools much more numerously at- 
tended, and the old-time cruelties in them 
brought to an end; the teachers better paid 
and the teaching made more sensible and 
effective. She saw a great advance in tem- 
perance sentiment throughout the world, and 
a corresponding recognition of the practical 
as well as the ethical value of the practice of 
total abstinence. So careful was she in her 
own practice in this respect, that she once 
denied a request to take in her trunk a bottle 
of California wine as a gift to a friend. She 



lived to see women vote on equal terms with 
men in nine states of the Union, to say 
nothing of the school suffrage in many other 
states. Yet she herself voted but once for 
school superintendent, and but once in a 
school meeting. She was not impetuous nor 
aggressive. She saw improvement in the 
legal status of women in neariy all the world. 
She saw all lands opened to Christian missions. 
She made no break with her early religious 
associations and training, but was prepared 
by them to receive new light from God's 
holy works as well as from His holy word. 
So she experienced the modification of harsh 
theologies and the lessening of sectarian 
rivalry. The fiery revivalism of the days of 
her young womanhood, with its extravagant 
and unreal confessions of personal guilt, and 
its tendency to false judgment of character, 
seemed to her the dross of the process by 
which native ore was turned into useful metal. 
She had a very great antipathy to anything 
that, in connection with religion, made much 
of form. She resented all ecclesiastical pre- 
tension and distrusted priests. She abhorrt d 
such titles as '"His Reverence," "His Grace" 
and "His Holiness." 

On the other hand she seemed to feel that 
the religion that lacks en otion is likely to 
lack motive, and it was right motive that, 
with searching of heart she always looked 
for. She did not like the hymn: 

Oh. to be nothing', nothing 

Only to lie at His feet 
A broken and emptied vessel 

For the Master's use made meet; 



82 



but she liked even less the spirit satirized in 
the lines: 

Oh, to be something, something. 

Each one to sit on a throne; 
With a cultured and lofty nature 

And an exquisite city tone. 

All affectation of culture and of nicety of 
phrasing was abhorrent to our mother's sin 
cere soul. Yet the culture that is the knowl- 
edge of the best she sought to secure, and 
much of the rare English of the Bible she 
knew by heart, and in devotion used its ven- 
erable utterances. Her memory kept much 
of the Assembly's shorter catechism and some 
of the quaint versions of the Psalms used in 
the Scottish churches. These treasures of 
the heart and mind were, to her, perennial 
fountains of blessing. 

In public matters she took a true citizen's 
duty in the making of two states. In one of 
them she helped in the upbuilding of Doane 
College. She saw the rescue of Kansas from 
the grasp of Border Ruffianism; the election 
of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency; the 
abolition of slavery, and the successful issue 
of the war for the Union. She was inclined 
to take the side of the under dog in the fight, 
and always sympathized with the wronged and 
oppressed. Anything sly, mean, false, un- 
derhanded or cruel kindled in her the fire of 
moral indignation. She could not abide the 
cruelties sometimes practiced upon animals. 
She was interested in and read with attention 
of great doings and of great public works: the 
building of the Great Eastern, now almost 
forgotten; the construction of the Pacific 
railways, and once or twice, though not in 
her last illness, she expressed a wish to 



83 



live until the completion of the Panama, 
canal. She neither feared death nor long:ed 
for it. 

But it was not the apparent or even the 
real greatness of things that commarded 
Mrs. Leavitt's deepest interest. Conscience, 
in the form of diligence and thoroughness, 
ruled all her judgments and work. She was- 
willing to make allowance for immaturity 
and inexperience, but not for carelessness 
and neglect. The closet was to be as clean 
and as orderly as the sitting room. The- 
humblest task of kitchen and of laundry must 
be well done. All this was without self-con- 
sciousness, but in accord with habit that grew 
out of the truth taught in the text: ''Thou- 
art a God that seeth." Yet she was not in- 
flexible. She never became too old to learn, 
and was always ready to do team work: to co- 
operate with others. Nor did she demand the- 
place of leadership. For her it was enough 
to be helper, and her help was given without 
grudging or complaint. 

No one was more competent to give a just 
characterization of Mrs. Leavitt than her 
brother, William Nelson, of Salt Lake City, 
who wrote: 

"Your mother lived a long, full life and 
was ripe for the end. She has had toilsome^ 
years and happy years. She was loved deeply 
and returned that love in full measure. She 
was unyielding in principle and steadfast in 
affection. She was a woman of unusual force 
of character, and influeniial over those with 
whom she came in contact. Her sympathies 
were wide and her heart was warm. She 
was firm in friendship and judgment, and out- 
spoken and determined in mind. The influ- 



•ence she exerted throughout her life was al- 
ways for good, and her desire always was to 
help those that were in need of help. Her 
loss will sweep away your anchorage: * * 
everything will be different with you hence- 
forth." 

As nearly as it could be true of a character 
of such decision and sincerity, as nearly as it 
ought to be S4id truly of any one, Mrs. 
Leavitt hai no enemies. She couldlbe angry, 
but not knowingly unjust. She could not 
abide pretence, idleness, frivolity, vanity 
and snobbishness. She stood appalled before 
hatred and malignity. It is doubtful that 
she quite understood the pharisaism that 
sometimes leads the insolent and the coarse 
to think that they only are honest in action 
and in speech; or the emptiness of heart and 
mind that leads to strivings for what is often 
thought of as social pre-eminence. Mortgag- 
ing a home to buy an automobile would have 
seemed to her like an act of insanity. Of an 
offender in any of the ways thus indicated, she 
might have said with the prophet Isaiah: 
"He feedeth on ashes; a deceived heart hath 
turned him aside; and he can not deliver his 
soul, nor say: Is there not a lie in my right 
hand?" Inability to see one's fault, and un- 
willingness to confess it, seemed to her as to 
the prophet to be among the most hopeless of 
moral conditions. But to his words she 
would have added: "Though he can not 
deliver himself, yet there is One who is able 
to deliver him." The prophets and Paul 
she honored, but the Lord Christ she wor- 
shiped and glorified. What pleased her best 
in one of the later Scottish stories was the 
43idding given by his aunt to a young minis- 



85 



ter: "Speak aye a gude word for Jesus 
Christ." This word, by her life, she spoke 
whom we called mother. Hers is not one of 
"the names that time will consign to eter- 
nity," but it is that of one of the "unknown 
good who rest in God's still memory folded 
deep." 



Rose of Enzie 

Written for the "Great West'' 

BY GEORGE BENNETT DAVIDSON 

O sweet is the primrose which blooms by the mountain. 

And sweet are the vines that encircle the tree; 
And sweet are cowslips that grow by the fountain. 

But sweeter the maiden, the rose of Enzie. 

How fair are the lilies, how sweet are the roses. 

How lovely the daisies where hums the gay bee; 
Bnt fairer, more lovely and dearer than either 

Is charming young Jessie, the rose of Enzie. 

She 's fair and she/s lovely as May's dewy morning; 

She 's handsome as Venus in grand majesty; 
No heart so unspotted, no features so charming 

As those of young Jessie, the rose of Enzie. 

'T is pleasant to walk 'mid the green shading bushes 
Where carol the birds in the hight of their glee; 

But pleisanter far to walk with young Jessie 
And bask in the smiles of the rose of Enzie. 

Run on, winding rills, through the groves and the meadows; 

Run on, till you meet in the depth of the sea; 
But guide me, O fortune, wherever I ramble. 

To meet with young Jessie, the rose of Enzie. 

Galena, Illinois. 



Mrs. Margaret Sanderson 

In Ruo-len of ancient Scottish story, there 
stands near the edge of a steep hill an old 
stone house. Up the hill Queen Mary of un- 
happy memory once rode after the battle 
that forever ended her reign over Scotland. 

But we are to tell neither the history of 
Rutherglen nor the story of Queen Mary. 
However, in giving the sketch of any life it 
is well to set forth its early environment, 
and for thirteen years Ruglen was the home 
of the subject of our narrative, a longer time 
than she spent elsewhere in all her life, with 
the exception of Pulaski, Illinois. 

In the old stone house, whose walls had 
they been then standing, might have heard 
the heavy breathing of Queen Mary's horse 
as his rider fled from the field of Langside, 
there was born, 1829, December 13th, to John 
and Margaret [Correns] Nelson, a second 
daughter and second child to whom was given 
the mother's name. Ecclesiastically, — and 
that is a great matter in Scotland, — the 
family did not belong to the established 
church, but to a body that had separated 
from it on the assertion that a congregation 
has a right to choose its own minister. It 
may be that unconsciously the foundation 
was thus laid of the education that in later 
years made Mrs. Sanderson almost a pioneer 
of Congregationalism in Southern Illinois. 

87 



For Margaret Nelson and her brothers and 
sisters, the year 1842 was an eventful one. 
On July 2nd of that year, the mother, a 
woman of rare excellence and of superior 
ability, was taken by death from her family, 
and in November the husband and father 
started with his children for America. A 
seven weeks' voyage brought them to New 
York on Christmas eve. The story of their 
father's migration has been elsewhere told. 

In the division of family labor that fol- 
lowed the mother's death, there was assigned 
to Margaret as her special duty the care of 
the younger brothers, both of whom grew up 
to be volunteers in the war for the Union. 
Joseph, the youngest son in the family, was 
killed by a rebel bullet in 1864, June 15th, at 
Kenesaw Mountain, Georgia. 

In a general way it may be said that young 
Margaret's life alternated between Fairplay 
and Galena. In the latter place she attended 
a "select school" taught by sisters. Miss 
Abby and Miss Jane Cook, who, being earn 
est members of the Presbyterian church, re. 
garded their work as a kind of religious mis- 
sion. Thus prepared, Miss Nelson became a 
teacher though she did not continue in that 
vocation. 1851, November 30th, she was 
married at Fairplay to Israel Sanderson, then 
of Galena. Of this marriage were born three 
sons, Edward, who, in his young manhood 
was accidentally drowned in Nevada; Walter, 
who died in 1888, and Arthur who died at 
Pulaski in 1875, but three months after the 
drowning of his elder brother. A daugh- 
ter Abby, Mrs. Arthur Holbrook, is now 
a resident of Mounds, Illinois. To her 
it was given to be the mother's companion in 



the last years of a long life, and to give ten- 
der care as the feebleness of age became more 
and more manifest. The end came at an early 
hour on the morning of Lord's day, August 
7, 1910. It was still dark but she said a little 
before her passing away, "Lift me up; I want 
to see the sunrise." On Tuesday August 9th, 
we laid to its last rest the frail body. Rev. 
J. N. Davidson, of Green Lake, Wisconsin, 
son of Mrs. Sanderson's elder sister, between 
whom and his aunt there had existed for 
many years an unusually strong attachment, 
aided Pastor J. H. Runalls in the funeral ser- 
vice. Burial was in Liberty cemetery be- 
side the husband and two of the sons. 

Inseparably bound up with the story of 
Mrs. Sanderson's life is, of course, that of 
her husband, who in his own right deserves 
memorial words. His great-grandfather was 
killed in Wolfe's campaign against Mont- 
calm, and his grandfather served under 
Washington in the War of Separation be- 
tween the colonies and the mother country. 
A son, Cyrus Sanderson, removed to Ken- 
tucky, and at Mayville, 1823, January 4th, 
the Israel Sanderson of our sketch was born. 
His name and family history indicate Puritan 
origin. 

The greater part of Mr. Sanderson's boy- 
hood and his early manhood were spent in 
Springfield, Illinois, where in the "State 
Journal" office he learned the trade of printer 
with the old-time thoroughness and careful- 
ness. He had many interesting recollections 
of Springfield, and the forms of Lincoln and 
Douglas were every day sights to him at that 
time. 

The success of Mr. Sanderson's life was 



achieved in newspaper work, though his first 
independent venture therein, "The Express" 
of Canton, Missouri was, financially a failure. 
In Galena, Illinois, he became intimately ac- 
quainted with some of the leading newspaper 
men of what was then the Northwest. There, 
too, he became the warm friend of George B. 
Davidson to whose memory he paid tribute 
in verse. In the art thus suggested Mr. 
Sanderson had some skill. He at one time 
contemplated publishing a poem upon Indian 
legends and customs, the material for which 
he may have gathered in Minnesota where 
he spent some time working at his trade. 
The manuscript he, in a moment of despond- 
ency, unwisely destroyed. Among the poems 
remembered by the writer is one wherein he 
expresses the indignation of a just man to- 
ward a priest who had refused Catholic burial 
to the body of a poor boy who, through no 
fault of his own, died without the due rites 
of the so-called "church." 

From Galena Mr. Sanderson removed to 
Monroe, Wisconsin, where he became asso- 
ciated with the late Rev. John Walworth in 
the publication of "The Monroe Sentinel," 
In 1855 Mr. Sanderson started the "Richland 
County Observer," the first paper in the 
county and brought it to a sound financial con- 
dition Having disposed of this paper he spent 
some time in Central Illinois. 

Mr. Sanderson started at Lancaster, in 
1859, the "Grant County Witness" which 
he soon removed to Platteville where 
it is still published. In these papers Mr» 
Sanderson strongly advocated the principles 
of the then recently formed Republican party. 
He also worked strongly for the cause of 

90 



temperance. After disposing of the "Wit- 
ness" he engaged in mercantile business for 
a time, but finally settled down at Pulaski, 
Illinois, as a fruit-grower. There in his home 
his aged mother died in 1873, and there he 
himself passed away on the 7th of June, 1887. 

For a great part of his life Mr. Sanderson 
labored under the burden of poor condition 
of health and this it was that impelled many 
of the changes of home and occupation. 
While not able always to give approval to 
her husband's judgment in these matters, yet 
Mrs. Sanderson was the faithful sharer of all 
his toils and undertakings. She recognized 
his abilities, which were of unusual order in 
many lines of effort, and honored his fidelity 
and conscientiousness. Wherever they lived 
they won a high place in the esteem of the 
community. 

Mrs. Sanderson seemed to be gentle, and 
was gentle. None the less she had decision 
and power. She wrote verses rather to ex- 
press her feelings and convictions than to 
please critics who would demand technical 
correctness of form. She loved flowers, and 
made and kept warm friendships. She en- 
dured great sorrow with a strong, brave 
heart; sustained by strong religious convic- 
tion and hope. Her last deep sorrow was 
the death, February 22, 1910, of the only son 
of her younger brother, William Nelson, 
editor of "The Salt Lake Tribune." To this 
brother she was for years almost like a 
mother, and his sorrow was her sorrow. Her 
sympathy was more deeply heart-felt because 
she herself, as already noted, had lost three 
sons. But all her grief is past now, and we 
believe that love and life do not turn to dust. 



These words are written in a home that for 
two summers, 1907 and 1909, enjoyed the 
benediction of her presence. It seems lonely 
without her. 

John Nelson Davidson. 

The Manse, 

Green Lake, Wisconsin. 



Our Wee Pet 

BY MARGARET SANDERSON. 

Wee pet, wee pet, 

Come here to me; 
Sweet pet, sweet pet. 

Sit on my knee; 
Brown eyes, brown eyes, 

Look into mine; 
Bright eyes, bright eyes. 

Oh, how they shine! 
Soft arms, soft arms, 

Fold round my neck; 
One kiss, one kiss. 

Now we will take. 
Dear one, dear one, you, you, I love; 
None like, none like, my little dove. 



9i 



William Nelson 

As this book is so largely a tribute to the 
first Mistress of the Green Lake Manse, her 
deep and constant love for the brother whom 
the people of Salt Lake City called Colonel 
William Nelson, makes it fitting that some 
account of his life should be given in con 
nection with that of her own. In death they 
were not long divided. On Saturday, Octo- 
ber 25, 1913, he was on duty as usual in the 
office of "The Salt Lake Tribune," of which 
he was editor-in chief. He worked until 
about midnight, as was his custom, reached 
home and went to bed about one o'clock. 
About six the next morning he was stricken 
with hemorrhage of the brain, and before 
the physician arrived his patient had passed 
into unconsciousness that ended in death 
within half an hour from the first attack. 
Save for the shock to loved ones, the hus- 
band and father probably would have chosen 
that it be so. He would have wished that the 
activity and usefulness of his life might be 
continued up to its very end. 

The characterization he gave of his eldest 
sister applies almost equally well to himself. 
A strength of body that made his muscles 
seem like springs of steel; a steadiness of 
nerve that enabled him in his young man- 
hood to hold without a quiver of the ex- 
tended arm, a thirty-pound dumb bell; cour- 
age that seemed absolutely to have no ac- 
quaintance with fear; a fidelity that never 



failed a friend,— that had in it the nobleness 
and none of the servility of a clansman's 
loyalty to his chief; ability that without aid 
from patron, sect, clique or faction, or the 
use of any underhanded method, brought 
him into prominence ; a love held in check 
upon the lips but overflowing in generous 
deeds: — these are the qualities by which all 
who knew him will hold him in abiding 
memory. He was a determined enemy of 
cant, affectation, pretence, falsehood, greed, 
fraud, sham and uncleanness; and, though 
neither suspicious nor ready to find fault, was 
quick to detect those things. He seemed to 
hold an Ithuriel's spear by which he could 
compel Satan to throw off disguise, a weapon 
which he found exceedingly useful in his pro- 
longed conflict with the Mormon hierarchy, 
that foulest of a foul brood. It seemed as if 
the blood of the Covenanters was in his 
veins, their spirit in his heart. He showed 
that their better qualities could exist apart 
from their grimness, which was fo eign to 
his nature and repellant to his choice, and 
apart from their theology, which he did not 
believe. 

It was to be expected that such a man, 
twenty two years of age on July 1, 1861, 
would become a volunteer soldier in the war 
for the Union. His service was in the 10th 
Wisconsin. A letter written from "Paint 
Rock Creek, Ala., May 12, 1862," tells of his 
first fight: 

"Dear Sister: You may think me negli- 
gent in not having written to you for so long. 
But when you know the reason you will not 
think so. I'll tell you how it happened: 
Three weeks ago (April 21st), I was detailed 



with a squad of fifteen men to guard a rail- 
road bridge on the Memphis and Charleston 
road. Our troops had possession of the road, 
and were stationed all along so that it was 
necessary to keep the road open through all 
its length ( it ends at Stevenson, Alabama), to 
keep up our communications. While at the 
bridge I had no chance to send letters. In 
fact I had not taken my things with me, not 
expecting to be gone more than two days. 
We had a good time at the bridge, the guard 
duty being light, and we were at liberty to 
scout around as much as we pleased. The 
only objection we had was there was no 
regular time to get rations, and we were 
frequently entirely out. But of course we 
could not be expected to starve, so we 
foraged, and found that chickens, ducks, 
geese etc., went pretty well. 

"We heard frequently that there was a 
plot in contemplation to burn the bridge, 
so we kept a good lookout, and I gave orders, 
to the sentinels to say nothing to any 
one after dark, but if they saw any one 
coming around to shoot him down. This 
may seem hard to you, but in the situa- 
tion we were there was no safety for us 
in any other course. There we were, many 
miles from assistance, in the enemy's coun- 
try where they were at liberty to collect hun- 
dreds to bring against sixteen of us in all. 
On April 27, we were up at a station two miles 
from the bridge on a fo'aging expedition, 
and while we were there our regiment passed 
along. Just as they were passing a set of 
wheels got loose and came near making a 
smash-up. As it was the train was stopped 
before any one was seriously hurt; but the 



track was damaged some. In consequence a 
detail of twenty men, under a lieutenant, 
was left there to repair it. So, you see, 
there was reinforcement within two miles of 
us in case we should be attacked. That 
same night the lieutenant brought his men 
down as he heard that we were to be at- 
tacked. But the night passed off quietly 
and in the morning they went back to the 
station. The next evening, however, I got 
news through the agency of a Negro, that the 
enemy intended certainly to attempt to burn 
the bridge that night. So I sent up to the 
lieutenant for reinforcements, and eight men 
and a sergeant came down. So that made 
our force twenty-five. I had made my ar 
rangements before they came, and had the 
force nearly equally divided at each end of 
the bridge. The bridge is high, and the 
only approach to it is on the track, which is 
very high grade there. The bridge is sided 
up and has a tin roof. You will see that we 
had a good position for defense. 

"The sentinels were posted advantageously 
to command a good lookout, and sure enough 
a few minutes after ten o'clock the enemy 
was seen swarming through the woods, 
making for the bridge. On the west end 
the sentinel came in and gave the alarm and 
we collected at the entrance. We let them 
come up to less than twenty yards, and then 
poured in a volley with good aim. It took 
them completely by surprise, and knocked 
some of them over, besides- But they re- 
covered quickly, and sent in a tremendous 
volley of buckshot and ball, wounding four 
of our men. Our men then fell back, and I 
was afraid that the enemy might make a rush 



for the entrance, but they did not. It was 
but a moment though, for I succeeded with- 
out much trouble in getting- our boys back, 
and then they got behind timbers and kept 
up a fast firing and with good aim. 

"On the east end the firing was more scat- 
tering. The boys there did not let them 
come up so as to get a good shot, but as soon 
as they saw them commenced firing. Of 
course they fired almost at random. Soon 
after the attack a bold secesh lit a torch and 
made for the bridge But he was soon drop- 
ped, and no more attempts of the kind were 
made. They frequently called on us to sur- 
render, and promised to treat us well if we 
would, but as I couldn't see the propriety of 
giving up, I didn't say anything to them. 
But the sergeant at the east end and some of 
the men there cursed them some, and sauced 
them like the deuce, which seemed to make 
them mad, as they called out, 'Rush in on 
them! Drag them out of that!' and a lot 
more stuff of similar import But we stuck 
to our trust, determined to save the 
bridge or die on it. We saved it though, for 
about half-past twelve the enemy withdrew 
after a pretty hard fight of more than two 
hours. 

"You may want to know how I felt during 
the fight. It was not pleasant, I can assure 
you. I think, however, that I kept pretty cool, 
and the only remarkable thing that I recol- 
lect is that I was tormented by a most awful 
thirst, and the worst of it was there was no 
water on the bridge, and it is so high from 
the creek that we couldn't get any. I picked 
up their buck-shot and put some under my 



97 



tongue and chewed them, but it was hard to 
get moisture in my mouth. 

"Seven of my men were wounded in the 
fight, two of them rather severely but not, 
dangerously. None was killed. In the morn- 
ing we found one of the enemy dead on the 
ground. He was buried in the afternoon. 
He was shot through the center of the 
breast and also through the heart. About 
half a mile from the bridge we found one of 
them lying wounded, shot through the body. 
He told us that there were 250 in his squad 
on the west end of the bridge, and we learned 
from citizens that there were 150 on the east 
end. The wounded man also told us that on 
the west end there were six killed and a 
good many wounded. We could get no ac- 
count of their loss at the east end, but a 
squad of Ohio boys who came there in the 
morning tracked them by their blood for five 
miles. You see there were about four hun 
dredof them against us twenty-five. They 
went oflf reporting that there were five hun- 
dred of us. It was a great shame to them 
that they could do nothing with such great 
odds in their favor — 16 to 1. But they are 
of no account. They have no nerve at all, 
and can't stand fire. In the morning our 
boys picked up several nice revolvers and 
some fine shot-guns which the enemy had 
left. I suppose they belonged to wounded 
men who dropped them when shot. 

"We got great praise from Gen. Mitchell 
and all our superior officers when they heard 
of it. The General called for the names of 
those engaged in the fight in order, as he said, 
to promote the sergeants and mention hon- 
orably the privates. So you may expect to 



hear of your cold-blooded brother being a 
lieutenant, or something of that sort, in the 
course of time, 

"After the fight there was no more dis 
turbance at the bridge, and yesterday we 
were withdrawn and our places supplied by 
Co. A of our regiment. 

"My health continues to be of the best. My 
name has never yet found its way to the doc- 
tor's books, and I hope it never may. Joe 
also has good health. The weather here is 
very warm in the day time and cool at night. 
The water is warm, and we have a good 
place to go in swimming. 

"This is the first day I have had a chance 
to write for three weeks, and th's is the first 
letter I have written. I will write to Joe and 
Nelson and Fanny soon. Did you get my 
letter from Shelbyville? 

"You will hear from me again soon. I 
don't get to see any papers here at all. 
Yours affectionately, 

William Nelson. '^ 

What wonder such an exploit called forth 
from Gen. Mitchell a congratulatory order in 
which he said: "The coolness, determination 
and bravery displayed by the non-commis- 
sioned officers and soldiers on this occasion 
are worthy of the highest commendation. 
Attacked in the night time by an overwhelm- 
ing force, ten times their number, this hand- 
ful of brave and determined men sternly re- 
fused the summons to surrender, sustained 
the enemy's attack for more than two hours, 
and finally drove him from the field with a 
severe loss of killed and wounded. 

' 'Sergeants Nelson and Makimson are recom- 

99 



mended to the reg-imental and brigade com- 
manders, and to the governor of their state 
for promotion, and the soldiers who fought 
under them so heroically will not be forgot- 
ten." 

In Thwaites's "Story of Wisconsin." we 
read "Buell's report makes honorable men 
tion of Sergeant William Nelson, of Com- 
pany I of the Tenth, who, with a detail of 
twenty-two [twenty-four] men. for two hours 
held Paint Rock railroad bridge near Hunts 
ville, against a force of nearly three hundred 
Confederate cavalry, 'repulsing them in the 
most signal manner.' This example Buell 
continues, 'is worthy of imitation by higher 
officers and larger commands.' " 

The commission of captain by brevet that 
ultimately came to Sergeant Nelson, was 
made to date from April 28, 1862. 

No doubt there are in this letter from 
Paint Rock, expressions that its writer 
would later have omitted or modified. He 
was not a man to discredit valor, even that of 
an enemy. But his standard was an exacting 
one. 

Children excepted in the mother's ca«e, 
there was upon earth no one dearer each to 
the other than this brother and this sister. 
For her sake he had delayed his enlistment. 
"But at last I determined that I could 
stand it no longer, and could not keep from 
enlisting. * * * The public interest 
seemed to me tol have louder calls to all 
able-bodied citizens than any private interest 
could have." Thus he wrote four days later 
(1862, May 16), in a letter that reveals his 
tenderness of heart toward still another 
sister: 

100 



"I received a letter from Elizabeth yester- 
day, announcing the death of her youngest 
boy. Oh, it must be a terrible shock to her. 
She is so full of kind feeling for all of us, 
whom she knows scarcely anything about, 
that it must have wrung her tenderest heart- 
cords to part with her darling. Her sorrow 
is great. Let us sympathize and sorrow with 
her. 'A baby in the house is a well-spring 
of pleasure.' What a barren waste must be 
left when that well-spring runs dry!" 

This sister Elizabeth, had been taken dur- 
ing her father's widowhood, and soon after 
his arrival in America, to the Lake Superior 
region, and there she had married. Letters 
were few in those days and Lake Superior 
practically almost as remote as Loch Lomond. 
At this time, however, she was living near 
Romeo, Michigan. 

On the fearful field of Chickamauga, the 
Tenth Wisconsin fought under Thomas, and 
Sergeant Nelson was one of the thousands of 
the Union army who were taken prisoners. 
He was never exchanged What sickness of 
hope deferred he suffered was revealed in 
the only letter that I remember of my 
mother's receiving from him in that dreary 
time. 

At last the end of the war came, and with 
it his deliverance. Then what a home-coming 
was his! Brother and sister literally "talked 
the night away." His own term of service 
had been long. He enlisted on the 25th of 
September, 1861; and was not discharged 
until June 7, 1865. She was the one who had 
become to him a second mother, and he, reti- 
cent to others, opened to her the wealth of 
his great heart. They had much to speak of. 

101 



The dying of their brother Joseph, on the 
field of battle (1864, June 15th), has already 
been told. The third soldier of that house- 
hold, the cousin Joseph Ross, had been hon 
orably discharged with his regiment, 1864, 
November 3d, and with his brother, Walter, 
had re-enlisted in Hancock's veteran reserve 
corps. A single fact will illustrate the 
sweep of war among the neighbors and 
friends that were theirs in common. In the 
little congregation, the nucleus of which was 
the still smaller church of which their 
father in life had been, and of which the 
sister continued to be, a member, there was 
not one man or boy who might reasonably 
have been expected do render army service 
who did not enlist. Nine funeral services by 
the pastor are recalled, and there were prob- 
ably others; funerals of soldiers. 

Twenty-six is a good age at which to face 
new conditions, especially if one has been earn- 
iag his own living ever since he was thirteen. 
In the summer or early autumn of 1865, Mr. 
Nelson, in partnership with the late D. B, 
Priest and J. M. Rusk, afterwards governor, 
bought "The Northwestern Times" of 
Viroqua, Wisconsin, and changed its name to 
the "Vernon County Censor." In 1872, Mr. 
Nelson was elected to the state senate of 
Wisconsin, and in the session that followed 
he was one of those who determinedly and 
successfully opposed the re-election of 
"Mat " Carpenter to the United States sen 
ate. It was not in the spirit of fault finding 
with the body of which he was a member 
that, April 21, 1872, he thus wrote to Mrs. 
Leavitt: 

"I had rather a good time in Madison the 

102 



past winter, and after the feeling of misery 
at the enforced idleness wore away, I en- 
joyed myself pretty well." A pity that he 
had not had more of enforced idleness. He 
knew no other kind. A sadly significant ex- 
pression occurs in the same letter: "I think 
that if children do not learn to enjoy them- 
selves while they are young, they will never 
be able to in their after lives." 

He had become, in 1869, the sole proprietor 
of the "Censor," but sold it in January, 1874, 
and became editor of the La Crosse "Repub- 
lican and Leader." In March, 1876, he was ap- 
pointed United States marshal for Utah, and to 
him fell certain peculiarly trying duties in 
connection with the trial and execution of John 
D. Lee, Mormon commandant at the Moun- 
tain Meadow massacre. Mr. Nelson's office 
was, at that time, one of great personal 
danger, a fact which his friends appreciated 
much more than he did himself.* 

In May, 1881, he became a member of the 
editorial staff of the "The Salt Lake Tri- 
bune," the leading daily between the Moun- 
tains and the Sierras, and a strong anti-Mor- 
mon paper. Of this for the last twelve years 
of his life he was editor in chief. During 
the thirty-two years of his connection with 
the "Tribune," he was laid off but three 
weeks by illness and took only one week of an 
almost required vacation. 

His marriage was at Viroqua, 1S66, August 
22, to Mary Elizabeth Fretwell, whose father 

* On March 4th, the day of Colonel Nelson's arrival 
at Salt Lake City, seven of the most hardened convicts 
in the penitentiary made an assault on the warden^ 
Berghor, whom they mortally wounded. They then 
succeeded in making- their escape, but were afterwai-ds 
retaken.— History of Utah. O. F. Whitney. 



gave his life in the war for the Union. There 
were born four daughters and one son who fol- 
lowed his father's example and became a 
volunteer soldier. His service was in the 
Philippines. This son, William Nelson, Jr., 
died at New Orleans, 1910, February 22nd. 
Then, as was written by an intimate friend, 
the father "closed his lips and said nothing, 
but those who knew him, knew how much he 
was suffering." 

"While I have not had an intimate ac- 
quaintance with Colonel Nelson," said Gov- 
ernor Spry, of Utah, on the occasion of his 
death, "I lived a neighbor to him for some 
time and I have, on numerous occasions, had 
opportunity to observe his tender devotion to 
wife and children. His gentle, lovable, fath- 
erly attentions to the members of his family 
on the street and at public functions, has 
often impressed me." 

It was fitting that such a man should be 
made a member of the first school board of 
Salt Lake City, a body which he served as 
president from 1892 until 1895. "During 
Colonel Nelson's administration, as I remem- 
ber," says Judge Robert N. Baskin, ex mayor 
of Salt Lake City, "thirteen of our modern 
school buildings were constructed. Colonel 
Nelson did more to raise our school system to 
its present high standard of efficiency than 
any other member who ever served on the 
board.'' 

"His work has made his name a household 
word in all thisintermountain region," wrote 
Judge C. C. Goodwin, the friend whose words 
about Colonel Nelson's sorrow for his son 
have been quoted. "He was devoted to the 
laws; to right, as God gave him to see the 

104 



right, and he had no compromises to ask or 
receive from the wrong." 

Of like sort was the testimony of an edi- 
torial associate: 

"To him the life of the nation and of the 
state — his nation and his state — depended 
upon the supremacy of the law. It was this 
motive that guided him in whatever battles- 
he fought, whether as a soldier in the field or 
as a soldier of the common good. With the 
vision of the wise man and the seer, he saw 
that the social order and the body politic rested 
upon a foundation of law, and that the non- 
enforcement of law, and law-breaking, were 
the most menacing elements of public peril 
in any community. In a sense he devoted his 
life to the maintenance of this ideal. Whether 
he was right or wrong, — and as men all of us 
are fallible, sometimes even in our most 
cherished ideals, — his words and his actions 
were dictated by absolute sincerity. 

"Such a man must of necessity be a strong 
character, and therefore a leader in his com- 
munity, and William Nelson * * became a 
guide for thousands who held fast to his 
ideals. And even those who disagreed with 
him acknowledged his profound sincerity and 
his inexorable conscientiousness. 

"What nobler death could there be for a 
great and good man, than to die on the firing 
line marked out for him by the Master! 
***** 

"In another column is told how he held the 
bridge at Paint Rock in 1862, like Horatius- 
of old, against a foe many times greater than 
the force he commanded. As he held the line 
then, so he held it all his life. 'We did not come 
a thousand miles to surrender, ' he told the Con- 

105 



federate leader who asked him to give up the 
bridge. And so through a long and honorable 
life he returned the same reply to any and 
all who demanded that he surrender princi- 
ples to which he gave the best that was in 
him, and for which he was willing to die. 

"Death could not find such a man unpre- 
pared and did not. '' 

What is all this but the fruition in life of 
the truth early taught this boy of mingled 
Galloway and Highland blood: "Man's chief 
end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him for- 
ever?'' 



The snbjoined resolutions of the Presbyte- 
rian Synod of Utah are evidence of Col. 
Nelson's work and character: 

Whereas, Our great newspapers are 
sources of immense power and influence, 
some for good and others not so good: and 

Whereas, There has been one such paper 
in Utah, that has always taken the side of the 
mission teacher and the mission preacher in 
their hard and oft-times discouraging work; 
and 

Whereas, There are two men who stand 
out prominently as editors in Utah for the 
past thirty years in this splendid work of 
making Utah a truly American state; there- 
fore, be it 

Resolved, That it is with peculiar pleasure 
that we, as members of the Synod of Utah, 
record our appreciation of the constant and 
splendid work of Judge C. C. Goodwin, of 
the Salt Lake Evening Telegram and William 
Nelson, of the Salt Lake Tribune. 

There has never been a cause advocated 
by the men of this synod for thirty years 

106 



past, that these editors have not backed up 
with the power of their pen. 

There has never been a cause of righteous- 
ness in Utah which these men have not de- 
fended. 

There has never been a calumny heaped 
upon the heads of any of our Christian peo- 
ple that these men have not refuted. 

The great broad principles which underly 
this republic have had in them ardent advo- 
cates. 

As members of this synod, we rejoice in 
many changes for the better in Utah, which 
these men have helped in bringing about. 

We rejoice that they are both of such un- 
failing service to the highest interests of this 
commonwealth. 

We rejoice that the "Bow of each of these 
men abides in its strength," and we offer to 
our Heavenly Father sincere gratitude for 
their services in the cause of right and our 
earnest supplications for the continued physi- 
cal and spiritual health of these two splendid 
citizens. 

A. G. Frank, 
Geo. W. Martin, 
W. E. Patten, 
Committee on Resolutions. 

Adopted unanimously by the Synod of 
Utah, Saturday, October 11, 1913, Mt. Pleas- 

WiLDMAN Murphy, 
Stated Clerk. 



107 



On a March 

September 14, 1863. 
Dear Sister Mary: 

We left our camp at Anderson Station, 
September 2nd. We have had tolerably easy 
marches, and have lain here three days. We 
have crossed two very high, tedious moun- 
tains this side of the Tennessee river. Th© 
first was Raccoon and the latter Lookout 
We crossed the last September 10th. That 
night we lay by our arms. In the morning it 
was generally understood that the enemy 
were near. Negley's division was the only 
force with us, and that was a short distance 
ahead. The rebels were said to have 25,000 
to 30,000. But we advanced about three 
miles, where Negley had skirmished with 
them the day before. We went only three 
miles as I said, then we bivoucked. In the 
afternoon early we were drawn up in battle 
order and advanced into the thick brush from 
a cross road. We formed to the left of Neg- 
ley's forces, as the rebs were flanking him in 
that direction. We advanced some distance, 
our skirmishers in front, but at last stopped, 
and lay there some three hours. During this 
time stray balls whizzed among us some, but 
no one was hit. Soon the enemy began to 
work to our left and we began to fall back, 
for if he should get by our left flank, he 
could easily destroy our train. We retired 
some two miles, falling from position to posi- 
tion several times, our troops cutting up the 
enemy pretty badly when they attempted to 
press too closely. It was late in the night be- 
fore all was still. There was not much can- 
nonading at any time. In the morning re- 
inforcements came up, and we took up posi- 

108 



tion covering our trains. In the afternoon 
we went out in force, but found but few of the 
enemy. They had traveled. A few prisoners 
were taken. It is said that General McCook 
ffot into their rear, and cut them up pretty 
badly, but as we don't get any papers just 
now, I have noauthentic news about that. But 
they saw fit to leave pretty fast, for some 
reason. 

I am in first-rate health and spirits. I can 
stand to march well. 

The weather has been very hot and dry. 
Dust is marvelously deep, and rises in chok- 
ing clouds among us as we move along the road. 
Water has often been scarce, and has been 
very bad generally. But now we get good 
water out of a cave of extensive underground 
dimensions, through which a clear stream of 
cool water runs. 

I got your letter containing the stamps 
while on this march I carried it in my 
pocket a day or two, and when I came to use 
them I found they were nearly all stuck to- 
gether by sweat. I could not get them split, 
so they are nearly all dead loss. But send me 
a lot more, I will be more careful next time. 
You see I write in pencil, but better that 
than not at all. 

Your loving brother, 

William. 



